Trump blows up at Germany over vast sums of money owed to NATO in series of tweets
Source: RawStory
TOM BOGGIONI
18 MAR 2017 AT 09:36 ET
As is his custom on Saturday mornings when he is vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago resort, President Donald Trump jumped on Twitter to complain about something — this time taking shots at both the media and Germany.
Following a meeting and press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel — where Trump refused to shake hands with the German leader and she gave him a dismissive glance when he brought up surveillance of both of them — Trump felt the need to set the record straight in typical Trump fashion on Twitter.
“Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” Trump began in his first tweet before getting to his latest complaint.
“Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!” he continued.
You can read the tweets below:
Link to tweet
Link to tweet
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Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/trump-blows-up-at-germany-over-vast-sums-of-money-owed-to-nato-in-series-of-tweets/
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It's never going to stop!
Emphasis on perverse, given the many innocents that will go down with it. 
I'll take what I can get. I say that only because we are going off the cliff environmentally anyway, and I want my sweet relatives and friends not to suffer too long.
Do you have a community there? We have indivisible groups coming out the ying yang! 2000 in the women's march. Wenatchee. 
We used to talk about Bush* & company using "distractions" when they did something objectionable. But everything that this one does is so OTT that it's hard to keep track because there's a new one every day! I went to the dentist on Thursday and spent less than 10 minutes in the waiting room. I checked out DU on my phone and in that time I must have seen and recced a dozen threads on the latest Trump scandals! How does he do it?! Is this some bizarre experiment to see how much we can take?? Everytime you think it can't be worse, he manages to top himself. I know we said similar things about Bush*, but this isn't even in the same universe...
I'm sure Uncle Vladdy hasn't.
It is absurd to complain that our portion of the combined total defense budgets of NATO member nations is too high. We could meet our obligation and cut our portion by simply reducing our budget to the the 2% GDP goal.
I just don't get it.
From Politifact:
For 2016, NATO’s total military budget is about $2 billion...
Each member contributes an agreed upon percentage of the shared budget. The United States leads the pack, paying 22 percent, as Samp said. This year, that comes to about $460 million. (Germany comes in second, paying about 15 percent.)
The total military spending goals for NATO members is 2% of GDP. For us, meeting that goal requires military budget of 320 billion. We spend almost twice that (and would spend more than twice that with DT's increase).
When he threatens to pull out of NATO, what does he mean? Does it mean we stop contributing $460 million (our 22% of the 2 billion NATO budget)? Or does it mean we'll suddenly say "we're going to start spending less than 2% of GDP on defense too"? Somehow, I don't think that's what he means. It would mean cutting our military spending in half. We are meeting (and far exceeding) spending goals "on our own." And DT is actually trying to increase, not decrease, that spending.
It is true that other members are not fulfilling the 2% GDP goal. According to this article in the Economist, it looks like only Britain, Greece, Poland, and Estonia are meeting, or exceeding, that goal. And yes, calling on nations to meet their goals is a good thing, but the U.S. has no grounds to bitch to NATO about the vast sums we shovel into the military money pit.
