Trump Says He ‘Thinks’ He Can Pull Out of NATO Without Congressional Approval

• Trump Says He ‘Thinks’ He Can Pull Out of NATO Without Congressional Approval
  by https://www.rt.com/
  Speaking with journalists at the NATO summit in Brussels, Donald Trump said he “thinks” he can pull out of NATO without congressional approval. The US president made the statement when asked if he had threatened to pull out of the alliance, and whether he thought he could do so without first consulting Congress. Trump ignored the first question, but on the second question, he said, “I think I can.”
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  According to Politico, Trump warned his allies behind closed doors that they would need to radically increase defense spending or the US “will do our own thing.”NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg then reportedly shifted the meeting to an allies-only emergency session, requiring European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to leave the room.
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  After the emergency session, Trump said that the alliance is “very unified, very strong, no problem.” He added that NATO allies had committed to increasing their defense spending to beyond two percent of GDP, and added that pulling out of the military alliance would therefore be “unnecessary.”
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  However, French President Emmanuel Macron denied Trump’s claim that all 29 member states pledged to increase spending beyond the two percent goal, and added that “President Trump never at any moment, either in public or in private, threatened to withdraw from NATO.”
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  At present, only five NATO member states – the US, UK, Greece, Estonia, and Poland – allocate two percent of their GDP to defense spending, a requirement for membership. In 2017, the US spent $686 billion on defense, over double the expenditure of all 28 other states combined.
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  The discrepancy in funding has been a constant source of chagrin for Trump, who has accused the other member states of not pulling their weight. In the run-up to this year’s summit, the president singled out Germany, which spends only 1.2 percent of its GDP on defense.
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  Voicing his frustrations via Twitter on Thursday morning, Trump said that previous US presidents have been lobbying Germany to increase defense expenditure for years, as the US continues to foot the bill for defense against a perceived Russian threat.
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