Fox News' Brit Hume brushes off Donald Trump's threat to abandon NATO
Published
Citation From the February 12, 2024, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier
BRIT HUME (GUEST): My guess about that, Bret, was it's typical Trump loose talk. My guess is that he meant that as a way of threatening the NATO allies who haven't paid their full freight, to which they are supposedly committed, and have said they would pay and they're not doing it -- not all of them, a lot of them are, but some of them are not. And so, he's trying to get them to pony up.
But loose talk about possibly not backing our NATO allies in the event of an attack from an enemy, particularly including Russia, is not helpful. And the one thing that the war in Ukraine has done is brought NATO closer together, to strengthen NATO's hand, it's gotten more members into NATO, the alliance now stands at a moment of greater strength than it has for some time. And that's a good thing. And, you know, the president is not wrong that some allies have not paid their full freight, but this kind of talk tempts dictators, tempts aggressors and doesn't help.