Category: Fight the Gaslighting

“Now you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe.”
…
“No, I look at them all. Look, EU is very difficult. … In a trade sense, they’ve really taken advantage of us and many of those countries are in NATO and they weren’t paying their bills(.)”
— President Donald Trump in an interview aired on ‘Face the Nation’, Sunday, July 15, 2018

Don, you ignorant rump.  Are you THAT stupid and misinformed that you have to keep repeating lies?

He actually said that.

Of course, this is more of Trump’s usual gaslighting.  He exaggerates the trade deficit with the EU by some 50% by not including services that the EU buys from us.

I already covered that there are no NATO “bills” to be paid.

He constantly takes a page out of the Nazi playbook with this.  Many people attribute “Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth” to Goebbels but it’s actually an extension of the “Big Lie” as outline by Hitler in Mein Kampf.

Trump’s preoccupation with trade in goods contradicts his own White House economic report, which he signed and was released in February.

The United States’ economy has shifted “away from manufacturing and toward service provision industries” in recent decades, according the report. “Focusing only on the trade in goods alone ignores the United States’ comparative advantage in services.” — NY Times article on the above-referenced report.

Details on the lies Trump tells about trade can be found in this N. Y. Times article.

“Many countries (in NATO) owe us a tremendous amount of money for many years back, where they’re delinquent, as far as I’m concerned, because the United States has had to pay for them.”
— Donald Trump at a bilateral breakfast with NATO Secretary General Gens Stoltenberg

Don, you ignorant rump!

There is no “NATO kitty” that countries pay into except for a small ($5B) budget that handles some military and civilian expenses.

NATO is covered by the defense budget of each country.  Their forces are assigned to NATO positions.  I know this from working in the U.S. Air Force and seeing NATO postings available.

While it is true that only 5 countries are meeting the agreement to spend 2% of GDP or more on defense (note on DEFENSE, not “on NATO”), those being the United States, Greece, the United Kingdom, Estonia and Latvia, the rest of the countries have UNTIL 2024 to meet that goal!

That’s quite the scale of public ignorance from the Commander in Chief.

Note that he took credit for increased NATO spending – except that the agreement was from 2014 and, as stated before, allows countries to 2024.