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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump has been fuming about NATO, musing about leaving the alliance, ratcheting up his criticism of European leaders and exposing a wider rift in the trans-Atlantic alliance — this time over the Iran war.
“NATO treated us very badly, and you have to remember it because they’ll be treating us badly again if we ever need them,” Trump said Wednesday at a private White House lunch for the upcoming Easter holiday that was posted online by a Business Insider reporter.
The president also suggested in an interview to The Telegraph newspaper in the U.K., published Wednesday, that he could potentially try to leave the alliance.
Yet in his televised Wednesday evening address to the American people about the Iran war, Trump chose not to mention NATO by name, suggesting only that countries that depend on oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz “must grab it and cherish it” because the U.S. would not.
Trump’s tension over NATO reflects the potentially dangerous consequences of breaking up the alliance, the limits on his own power to do so and the careful mending of the relationship performed by fellow world leaders. But one certainly is that Trump’s displeasure with NATO appears to be a feature of his presidency, rather than an issue that can be easily settled.
Congress passed legislation in 2023 that would prevent any president from pulling out of NATO without its app...
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