NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte credited President-elect Donald Trump for increased defense spending across the alliance on Wednesday.
Rutte defended the president-elect during an interview on MSNBC where host Jonathan Lemire appeared to invite criticism of Trump over his relationship with NATO during his first term.
“In 2018, then-President Donald Trump, at a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, came this close to pulling the United States out of that organization. He has repeatedly criticized NATO since then. How is the alliance preparing for his return?” Lemire asked.
Rutte said that Trump was right to be critical of the organization at that time.
“But, he was right in 2018 when he said that we had to spend more. And I think it is thanks to Donald Trump that NATO, if we could exclude for a second the U.S., is now at the 2% which was agreed in 2014,” Rutte said,…
