Former President Donald Trump on Monday took credit for Germany finally meeting NATO’s defense spending requirement, after the country failed to fulfill its obligation for years.
“I hope everyone is able to remember that it was me, as President of the United States, that got delinquent NATO members to start paying their dues, which amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said. “There would be no NATO if I didn’t act strongly and swiftly.”
“Also, it was me that got Ukraine the very effective anti-tank busters (Javelins) when the previous Administration was sending blankets. Let History so note!” Trump added.
On Saturday, Germany announced it would finally contribute at least 2 percent of its GDP to defense spending. “From now on, more than 2 per cent of our GDP will be invested in our defence,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said about the additional 100 billion euros that would be added to the German defense budget. Breitbart News reported:
While Germany has increased its defence spending over recent years, it has consistently failed to reach the NATO threshold, spending just 1.53 per cent on defence last year, according to NATO figures.
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Germany has long been criticised for its failure to meet its NATO obligations while at the same time shipping billions to Russia in exchange for natural gas.
In 2018, Trump had criticized Germany’s lack of defense spending while buying oil from the Russians.
“It is very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia, where we’re supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany goes and pays out billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia,” Trump said. “We’re protecting Germany, we’re protecting France, we’re protecting all of these countries.”
“We’re paying a lot of money to protect, this has been going on for decades… it’s very unfair to our country, it’s very unfair to our taxpayers… these countries need to step it up, not over a ten year period, but immediately.”
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