WaPo (The Washington Post) has always been anti-Trump - just read their articles about anything that has to do with Trump. That is fine, it is amusing. They are following Trump's antics in Brussels. Here are three articles that were sent out as alerts:
1. Trump upends NATO summit with demand for immediate defense spending increases, threatens to 'go his own way' if it doesn't happen (Note CNN says this is not verified.)
2. Trump says NATO leaders will increase defense spending after 'tough' meeting and that US remains committed to alliance
3. Correction: Trump threatens to 'do his own thing' if NATO members didn't increase spending
And they rolled all of these alerts into this article. The title seems a bit biased. "Trump says... after he upends summit."
Trump's position is not different from previous presidents. Just his delivery.President Trump reaffirmed U.S. support for NATO Thursday after he upended a summit here to admonish leaders and demand that they quickly increase their defense spending.
Trump’s ambush jolted the transatlantic alliance, and some diplomats perceived his comments as threatening a U.S. withdrawal from NATO. But Trump later declared in a news conference, “I believe in NATO,” and, as he prepared to depart Brussels, he reiterated that the United States is committed to its Western allies.
“I told people that I’d be very unhappy if they did not up their commitments very substantially,” Trump told reporters after the meeting. “Everyone’s agreed to substantially up their commitment. They are going to up it at levels never thought of before.”
NATO member nations committed in 2014 to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense by 2024. It was not immediately clear what specific new commitments had been made. Trump said that leaders responded to his demands by agreeing to reach that goal soon.
“Ultimately, that will be going up quite a bit higher than that,” Trump said at the news conference, after privately calling Wednesday on leaders to double their commitments to 4 percent of gross domestic product.
Trump’s focus on defense spending rocked the NATO summit on its final day. He used a morning meeting to discuss Georgia and Ukraine, two countries with tense relations with Russia to trumpet his spending concerns and rail against European countries, including Germany and Spain, for failing to contribute more to their defenses and for relying too heavily on the largesse of the United States. The moment sent “everyone into a tailspin,” according to one diplomat briefed on the morning’s events.
In the closed-door session, Trump told his counterparts that if they did not meet their defense spending targets of 2 percent of gross domestic product by January, the United States would go it alone, according to two officials briefed on the meeting. The officials said Trump threatened to “do his own thing.”
Trump then held an impromptu news conference, where he was asked whether he could withdraw the United States from NATO without congressional approval. The president replied, “I think I probably can, but that’s unnecessary.” He added: “The people have stepped up today” as they never have before. “Everyone in the room thanked me. There was a great collegial spirit in that room. . . . Very unified, very strong. No problem.”
Trump went on to say that “NATO is much stronger now than it was two days ago.”