NATO/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “As a NATO summit he threw into chaos wrapped up Thursday [7-12-18], President Donald Trump cheekily declared himself a ‘very stable genius.’ The other world leaders present mostly begged to differ. Trump’s wildly unpredictable performance over two days in Brussels left many European leaders convinced that there is little method to the American president’s rhetorical madness, and simply no way to anticipate what he might do next…Frederiksen said NATO allies now ‘live with the uncertainty’ that Trump ‘plays in a completely different way than the rest of us…’ Trump upended the summit even before it started by unleashing a tirade against Germany during a breakfast meeting on Wednesday [7-11-18] with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and created further upheaval by hijacking a meeting Thursday morning about Ukraine and Georgia during which he again demanded that allies quickly increase their national military spending and threatened that if they failed to do so, the U.S. could break with the alliance and start conducting security policy unilaterally, by going its ‘own way.'”
–David M. Herszenhorn and Jacopo Barigazzi, “‘Very stable’ Trump? European leaders beg to differ,” Politico, July 12, 2018 5:07 pm