Donald Trump once again is being accused of giving Vladimir Putin a helping hand, on the heels of the Republican presidential front-runner's tough NATO criticism.
After the billionaire businessman criticized the alliance earlier this week as expensive and "obsolete," his political foes noted that any pull-back from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was created in 1949, would be greeted as welcome news in Moscow.
“That would be a massive victory for Putin and a massive victory for ISIS,” his opponent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, told Fox News' "The O’Reilly Factor."
“Donald's approach on foreign policy is one of weakness and isolationism,” Cruz added. “That's his position consistently across the globe.”
Trump took on the NATO issue during a meeting earlier this week with The Washington Post editorial board. He said the U.S. “shouldn’t be nation building anymore,” and NATO has become too expensive, with too little commitment from allies, to fully invest in. He accused Germany and other allies of not doing enough on Ukraine, which is locked in a regional power struggle with Russia.
“We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore,” he told the paper, adding later, “NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money.”
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This prompted Democratic presidential front-runner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to sound off. “If Mr. Trump gets his way, it will be like Christmas in the Kremlin,” she said Wednesday in a Stanford University speech.
For his part, Trump stood by his comments, calling NATO “obsolete” on Twitter, though he stopped short of saying the U.S. needed to get out completely. Instead, he said NATO “must be changed to additionally focus on terrorism as well as some of the things it is currently focused on. ... We pay a disproportionate share of the cost of NATO. Why? It is time to renegotiate, and the time is now!"
Trump did not cast his comments as in any way a concession to Russia. But Trump and Putin famously have been making favorable comments about one another dating back months.
“I've always felt fine about Putin. He's a strong leader, he's a powerful leader,” Trump told MSNBC in December. “He's actually got popularity within his country.”
Russian authorities seem to be having fun with the political back-and-forth, with a Russian foreign ministry spokesman telling Reuters this week that Trump’s latest comments were welcome in that they showed the global alliance, which grew in the 1950s and '60s in reaction to the rise of the Soviet Union, in crisis. Russia has maintained that NATO abrogated agreements it made with Russia not to expand into former Soviet countries, including the Baltic States.
Trump and Putin are similar, the ministry told Reuters. “They are both open-minded, pragmatic, and say what they think.”
Autoplaying video of some talking head at link:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/25/trump-accused-putin-favors-with-nato-criticism.htmlWhich retard decided this was a good idea?
IF Trump is the nominee - congratulations, you've just completely neutrallized Hillary selling 20% of the US uranium to the damned Russians.
Freaking idiots.
