U.S. President Donald Trump tore into NATO after a roughly two-hour private meeting with Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Wednesday, underscoring the transatlantic rift following what the military alliance chief described as a blunt exchange of views.
Trump went into the talks openly entertaining an American withdrawal from the alliance after NATO members rejected his call to join the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. “I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration,” he said last week, when asked whether he might rethink America’s NATO membership after the conflict.
The meeting appears to have done little to soften his stance. Trump was back on Truth Social with a full-throated broadside Wednesday evening: “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN.”
The president also signaled he was still stewing over his aborted bid to claim control of Greenland, a self-ruling Danish territory in the Arctic. “REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” he added.
Rutte, moving quickly to contain the fallout, told CNN shortly after leaving the White House that Trump had voiced “disappointment” during what he described as a “frank and open” discussion.
He said he reminded the president that the “large majority of European nations has been helpful, with basing, with logistics, with overflights,” and pointed to “widespread support [in Europe] for the fact that degrading the nuclear and the ballistic-missile capacity from Iran was really crucial, and that only the U.S. was able, at this point, to do that.”
