Republican officials, once crucial, back Trump after NATO comments

After Donald J. Trump suggested that he had threatened to encourage Russia to attack “delinquent” NATO allies, the response from many Republican officials hit three themes: expressions of support, aversion, or even cheerful indifference.

Republican Party elites have become so accustomed to dismissing even Trump's most outrageous statements that they have quickly dismissed them. Mr Trump, the party's presumptive presidential nominee, had claimed at a rally on Saturday in South Carolina that he had once threatened a NATO government into defaulting on its financial obligations – or he would encourage Russia to “do whatever they want” with that country. .

In a telephone interview on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina seemed surprised when he was even asked about Mr. Trump's comment.

“Give me a break — I mean, it's Trump,” Mr. Graham said. “All I can say is that during Trump's presidency, no one invaded anyone. I think the idea here is to, in his own way, make people pay.'

Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican Party official on the Senate Intelligence Committee, struck a matter-of-fact tone when he explained on CNN on Sunday why it didn't bother him at all.

“He told the story of how he used power to get people to step up to the plate and be more active in NATO,” Mr. Rubio said on “State of the Union,” echoing Mr. Trump’s comments rationalized and sanitized as just a more colorful version of what other American presidents have done in urging NATO members to spend more on their own defense. 'I'm not worried at all because he has been president before. I know exactly what he has done and will do to the NATO alliance. But there must be an alliance. It is not the American defense with a bunch of small junior partners.”

Mr. Trump's comments at the meeting were not part of his teleprompter remarks, according to a person close to him who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But the comment – ​​a new version of a story he has been telling for years – quickly fueled already serious doubts in Europe about Trump's commitment to NATO's collective defense provision. That provision, known as Article 5, states that an armed attack on one member “shall be considered as an attack against them all.”

Mr. Trump has used his power over the Republican Party to kill the recent election bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill to send Ukraine more weapons and vital resources for its fight against Russia. Ukraine is not a NATO member, but helping Ukraine maintain its independence has become the alliance's defining mission since President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia began his military invasion in February 2022. the international community and foreign policy experts will become something of a proxy for how he will approach NATO, America's most important military alliance, in a possible second term.

Officials from smaller and more vulnerable NATO countries are especially concerned because Mr. Trump has already suggested that it is not in America's national interest to go to war with Russia over a small country like, for example, Montenegro.

The international reaction to Trump's comments on Saturday included a rare public rebuke from Jens Stoltenberg, NATO's secretary general. Mr Stoltenberg said that “any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines our entire security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers in greater danger.”

The defense of Mr. Trump by several Republican officials, such as Mr. Graham, reflected the trajectory of a party that the former president has largely bent to his will.

Eight years ago, when Mr. Trump was in the middle of his first campaign for president, Mr. Graham would have given a very different answer. In that campaign, Mr. Graham — initially one of Trump's competitors in the primaries, whom Mr. Trump quickly defeated — saw himself as a defender of the Republican Party's internationalist values ​​against what he saw as the acute threat of America's isolationism Mr. Trump. .

As the wingman of the late Republican hawk and war hero Senator John McCain of Arizona, Mr. Graham traveled across the country warning anyone who would listen of the dangers of Mr. Trump. But after Mr. Trump won the presidency, Mr. Graham began to become a friend and close adviser and was welcomed into Mr. Trump's inner circle. Many others followed a similar path.

In 2016, Mr. Rubio, another foreign policy hawk who vied with Mr. Trump for the party's nomination, called Mr. Trump a “con man” and warned how dangerous He would be too if he were entrusted with the country's nuclear codes. But after Mr. Trump won, he put those feelings aside, befriended Mr. Trump and is now among a handful of Republicans vying to become his running mate.

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, one of the most hawkish Republicans on national defense, suggested that European countries in the alliance needed to do more to maintain their own defenses against Russian incursions.

“NATO countries that are not spending enough on defense, like Germany, are already encouraging Russian aggression and President Trump is just sounding the warning bell,” Mr. Cotton said in an interview. “Strength, not weakness, deters aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine twice under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but not under Donald Trump.”

Several former national security and foreign policy officials in the Trump administration declined to speak about the anecdote Mr. Trump told about threatening the head of state of a NATO member state with encouraging Russian aggression. But they said they could recall no such meeting actually taking place.

Mr. Trump is fond of outright falsehoods when relaying stories to make himself look like a tough negotiator. His former national security adviser John Bolton, who has warned that Trump would withdraw the US from NATO for a second term, said he had never heard of Trump threatening another country's leader that he would encourage a Russian invasion.

Another former official, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid inflaming Mr. Trump, subtly described the story as “an exaggeration.” Yet another former official — H.R. McMaster, Trump's second national security adviser and a retired Army lieutenant general — offered a one-word assessment of Trump's comments: “Irresponsible.”

Mr Trump often praises Mr Putin – he has described the invasion of Ukraine as the work of a “genius' – and has long admired him as a 'strong' leader.

During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called on Russia to “find” emails that Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic nominee for president and a target of Mr. Putin, had deleted from her private email server. He has suggested that Putin is no morally different from American leaders. When former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly pressed Mr. Trump on his admiration for Mr. Putin shortly after taking office, saying the Russian leader “is a killer,” Mr. Trump responded: “ What do you think?” is our country so innocent?”

But as president, Mr. Trump's policies toward Russia have at times been tougher than those of his predecessor — a point Mr. Trump's allies emphasize as they brush aside statements like Saturday's as rhetoric runs rampant. Trump's allies, who argue that he will not undermine NATO in a second term, point out that in his first term he agreed to send anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, which President Obama did not do after Russia seized Crimea in 2014 taken.

As he pushes to take back the White House — and polls show he has a good chance of doing so — Trump has been cagey about his intentions for NATO. His campaign website includes a single cryptic sentence: “We must complete the process we began under my administration, which is to fundamentally reevaluate NATO's purpose and mission.”

When Trump and his team were asked what that means, they declined to elaborate.

Mr. Trump has been focused in private conversations on treating foreign aid like loans, something he has posted about on social media, as Senate Republicans tried again to pass an aid package on Sunday after Mr. Trump helped undermine their previous efforts. But the comment about Russia seemed to catch most of his team's players by surprise.

When Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump's campaign, was asked to elaborate on the former president's statements — including whether it was an invitation for new aggression from Russia — he did not directly address the question.

“Democrats and media pearl-crackers seem to have forgotten that we had four years of peace and prosperity under President Trump, but Europe saw death and destruction under Obama-Biden and now even more death and destruction under Biden,” Mr. Miller said. “President Trump pushed our allies to increase their NATO spending by demanding they pay up, but Joe Biden let them take advantage of the American taxpayer again. If you don't pay your defense spending, you can't be surprised to see more war.”

NATO countries' spending on their own defense grew during the Trump administration, but increased by an even greater amount during the Biden administration after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who worked in the Trump administration, has remained close to Mr. Trump and has also spoken out about the need to defend Ukraine. Speaking at the request of the Trump campaign, he said he did not believe Mr. Trump. Trump opened the door for new aggression.

Mr. Trump, Mr. Kellogg said, has a “record of deterrence.”

He added, “I really think he's on to something,” and said he believes Mr. Trump's goal is to get NATO members to focus on Article 3 of NATO's founding treaty, calling on countries to build their individual and collective capacities to prevent the fight against war. an armed attack.

“I don't think it's an encouragement at all,” Mr. Kellogg said, because “we know what he means when he says it.”