US could ‘absolutely’ leave NATO, Trump says. The US president-elect also called for a ceasefire in Ukraine, calling for a “deal” with Russia.
Donald Trump commented on the war in Ukraine and U.S. membership in NATO during an interview with Kristen Welker filmed Friday and aired this morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday addressed the condition he would need to remain in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the military bloc takes on renewed importance in a post-Biden political era.
Trump has been deeply critical of NATO for years, with The New York Times reporting in early 2019 that he had privately said “several times” the previous year that he wanted to pull the United States out of the alliance.
KRISTEN WELKER: Should Ukraine prepare for less aid from the United States after you’re sworn in to office?
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. Probably. Sure.
KRISTEN WELKER: You said you can end the war in 24 hours. You’ve even said you want to try to end it before you’re sworn into office —
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’m trying to. I’m trying to end it if I can —
KRISTEN WELKER: You’re actively trying to?
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: I am.
KRISTEN WELKER: Have you talked to President Putin?
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: No, I have not.
KRISTEN WELKER: You haven’t talked to President Putin since you’ve been elected?
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: I mean, no. Well, I don’t want to say that. But I haven’t spoken to him recently.
KRISTEN WELKER: So you’ve spoken to President Putin since you’ve been elected?
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: I don’t want to say that. I don’t want to say anything about that because I don’t want to do anything that could impede the negotiation.
KRISTEN WELKER: But you have talked about —
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: Let me tell you what I have talked about. Let me tell. There are people being killed in that war at levels that nobody’s ever seen before. You have to go back to the Second World War, and even that, if you take a look — and you know what it is? It’s the soldiers largely. The cities have been emptied out and demolished. The country has been demolished. If I won that election, which you know how I feel about it. I won’t get into it because we don’t need to start that argument. I think it’s an easy argument. It was really proven even more conclusively by the win that I had on this one.
KRISTEN WELKER: But you did go to – court, sir. And you didn’t –
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, well, that’s your opinion. But I disagree with it. Had I assumed, kept control. Number one, Israel wouldn’t have happened. Number two, Ukraine would’ve never happened. It would’ve never happened, Ukraine, Russia. But the number of people that are being killed, soldiers, young, beautiful soldiers, hundreds of thousands of people are being killed. And, you know, it’s very interesting. It’s level. Totally level, the battlefields. Totally level. You know what’s happening? The only thing that stops a bullet, you know what it is? Is a body, a human body. And the people that are being killed, hundreds of thousands on both sides. Russia’s lost probably 500,000 –
KRISTEN WELKER: It’s devastating.
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: Ukraine’s lost higher than they say, probably 400,000. You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of bodies laying all over the fields. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, and it should’ve never been allowed to happen. Biden should’ve been able to stop it.
KRISTEN WELKER: Sir, will the United States stay in NATO while you’re in office? Do you commit that the United States will remain a member of NATO while you’re in office?
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: Again, they have to pay their bills. If they pay their bills, absolutely.
KRISTEN WELKER: But not if they don’t pay their bills?
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: But NATO’s taking advantage of us. Because we were – look, two things. Number one, they take advantage of us on trade, meaning the European nations, okay, like terrible. They don’t take our cars, they don’t take our food product, they don’t take anything. It’s a disgrace. And on top of that, we defend them. So it’s a double-whammy. So let me just tell you, I was able to get hundreds of billions of dollars put into NATO just by a tough attitude. I said to the countries, “I’m not going to protect you unless you pay,” and they started paying. And that amounted to more than $600 billion. That’s a big thing. Otherwise they wouldn’t even be fighting. They wouldn’t have any money to fight. If they’re paying their bills, and if I think they’re doing a fair – they’re treating us fairly, the answer is absolutely I’d stay with NATO.
KRISTEN WELKER: But if not, you would consider the possibility of getting out?
PRES.-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Incoming president Donald Trump claims that he will “probably” reduce the incoming aid to Ukraine, but not eliminate it altogether as his base originally assumed. Trump previously vowed to put an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, but now seems content to let the conflict continue.
Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised that he would end the Ukraine conflict within “24 hours” of taking office, without offering any specifics on how he would achieve this. However, it is widely believed that he would use the threat of a reduction in U.S. aid to force Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to negotiate, and the threat of increasing said aid to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into talks. –RT
United States President-elect Donald Trump has said he will “probably” reduce American aid to Ukraine once he takes office, in an interview aired hours after he called for an “immediate ceasefire” between Moscow and Kiev. During the interview broadcast by NBC News on Sunday, Trump was asked whether Ukraine should “prepare for less aid from the United States” after his inauguration next month. “Possibly. Yeah, probably, sure,” Trump replied.
He’s not even in office and he’s already backpeddling. But this is typical of rulers. They only want power.
The US has allocated $131.36 billion for Ukraine since February 2022, according to figures published by the Pentagon earlier this month. Just under $90 billion of this amount has actually been transferred, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy. –RT
Less than a week ago, Ukraine’s ruler Volodymyr Zelensky said that he would be willing to sign a ceasefire agreement in exchange for NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) membership. This has been one of Russia’s sticky points from the beginning.
Trump took to social media on Sunday to claim that “Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness,” before calling for “an immediate ceasefire and negotiations,” lest the conflict “turn into something much bigger, and far worse.” Trump also claimed that Ukraine has lost 400,000 soldiers since 2022, a figure far higher than any body count published by Kiev or any of its Western backers.
So far, there have not been reasonable suggestions by either Ukraine or Russia that would lead anyone to believe that a ceasefire is incoming or that Donald Trump could facilitate that. But we can always hold out hope that this war will end in a timely manner rather than expanding and becoming a global conflagration that’s horrifically devastating.
Musk reacts to Zelensky’s NATO claim
The US president-elect’s adviser seemed puzzled by something. Elon Musk has expressed confusion over remarks by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky about pressing the White House on NATO membership for Kiev.
The South African tech billionaire played a major role in Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election last month and has been described by the media as “first buddy” due to his spending a lot of time at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
On Monday, Musk reposted a video shared by one of his favorite X creators, Mario Nafwal, with nothing but a ‘face with raised eyebrow’ emoji. The symbol represents “skepticism, doubt, disapproval, wonder, and confusion.”
Musk was reacting to Nafwal quoting Zelensky as saying “I will ask Biden to invite me to NATO… there’s no point in talking to Trump.”
The 42-second video, subtitled in English, showed Zelensky explaining to someone in Kiev that Trump is not yet in the White House and Joe Biden is still in office.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2024
“I will call President Biden in the near future, if he has the opportunity to speak to me, and raise the question of the NATO invitation, because he is the current US president and much still depends on his position,” Zelensky said. “There is no point in discussing that with President Trump while he is not in the White House, it does not depend on him.”
Musk has provided Ukraine with Starlink satellite communication, but has been an advocate for making peace with Russia. Trump has asked him to be one of the leaders in the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory body.