"As you know, I requested that they pay 5 percent, not 2 percent, Trump said of the NATO members. And most people thought that was not gonna happen. And it happened virtually unanimously. We had one laggard. It was Spain. Spain. You have to call them and find out: Why are they a laggard?"
"They have no excuse not to do this, but that's all right. Maybe you should throw them out of NATO, frankly."
"Since his first term as president, Trump has wavered in his public comments about NATO, at times embracing the alliance and, at other moments, rejecting it as obsolete."
The US president harboured a months-long feud with Spain after it rejected his call to increase NATO defence funds. A meeting with Finland's president shifted to NATO and Spain's exemption from higher spending. At a June NATO summit, Spain was the most prominent holdout against a US push for members to commit 5 percent of GDP, securing an exemption to remain around 2 percent. The president publicly labeled Spain a "laggard," urged inquiry, and mused about expulsion. The president's public stance on NATO has alternated between embrace and rejection while he defended Finland, which joined NATO in April 2023.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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