FOREIGN POLICY/GERMANY/MILITARY/NATO/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “So we have 52,000 soldiers in Germany. That’s a tremendous amount of soldiers. It’s a tremendous cost to the United States. And Germany, as you know, is very delinquent in their payments to NATO. And they’re paying 1 percent, and they’re supposed to be at 2 percent. And the 2 percent is very low; it should be much more than that. So they’re delinquent of billions of dollars, and this is for years. Delinquent. So we’re removing a number down to — we’re putting the number down to 25,000 soldiers. We’ll see what happens. But Germany has not been making payment.
In addition to that, I was the one that brought it up. Everybody talks about ‘Trump with Russia’ — well, I brought this up a long time ago: Why is Germany paying Russia billions of dollars for energy, and then we’re supposed to protect Germany from Russia? How does that work? It doesn’t work.”
-Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump in Roundtable Discussion on Fighting for America’s Seniors,” whitehouse.gov, June 15, 2020