More fake news from the corrupt Democrat/Soros media complex has been exposed. Over the weekend, several media outlets were claiming that while Angela Merkel was at the White House, Donald Trump handed her an invoice of $374 billion in unpaid NATO dues. Had this been true, I’d be cheering it. But as usual and as is usually the case with the corrupt fake news media, this turned out to be a lie. I seriously wish Trump would handed Merkel that invoice.
| Fake News: No, Trump didn’t hand Merkel $374 billion NATO invoice |
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Anyway, both sides are denying that Trump produced any invoice for Merkel. “The reports about the mentioned invoice or bill are wrong,” a German government spokesman told BuzzFeed this morning, while Sean Spicer reassured Business Insider that it never happened. Why the White House would be so quick to shoot this down isn’t clear, though, given how well Trump’s “pull your own weight” rhetoric plays with American populists — especially when it’s aimed at the loathed Angela Merkel, architect of Europe’s Middle East refugee influx. Maybe Trump and his team realized that the more they try to squeeze Merkel for “dues” Germany supposedly owes, the more popular they risk making her back home in an election year when they’re hoping to see her ousted. “[An] increase in defense spending is unpopular, and so is Donald Trump. By ‘ordering’ Merkel to increase spending, he will make it harder for her to sell that increase at home,” said one German expert to WaPo. “Nothing would be worse for Merkel than being seen as taking orders from Trump.
Trump has lots of levers if he wants to speed up Germany’s defense spending. He could make targeted cuts to U.S. military expenditures on NATO readiness, he could shrink the entire defense budget knowing that some of those cuts would come out of NATO’s defense, or he could withdraw from NATO entirely, all of which would make Moscow happy. His problem is that, with the possible exceptions of Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, no one around him seems to be gung ho to play hardball with NATO, especially at a moment when Russia is testing the alliance over Montenegro. In lieu of an exit question, watch this exchange (at 8:00) between Jon Tester and James Mattis a few weeks ago at a defense hearing. Do you agree with Trump’s tweets that Germany owes America money, Tester asks? That’s not the way NATO works, says Mattis. We judge by capabilities, not money owed. But they’re on track to get up to speed by 2024.