Before the White House shocked America yet again with two separate defenses of Russian propaganda efforts, the first being Donald Trump's dismissal of ongoing Russian election hacking and the second being White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refusing to rule out a Russian proposal that the Trump administration help provide them access to two of Putin's most hated enemies, the British financier responsible for the Magnitsky Act and a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, the shocking Trump news of the day was primed to be Trump's dismissal of the very premise of NATO.
Asked by Fox News white nationalist propagandist Tucker Carlson about why America should bother defending NATO members like the tiny Montenegro, Trump bashed the country and appeared to agree with Carlson's criticism of the NATO mutual defense compact.
“Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?” Carlson asked in the interview, which was recorded Monday after Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
“I understand what you’re saying, I’ve asked the same question,” Trump responded. “You know, Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. . . . They are very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations, you’re in World War III. But that’s the way it was set up. Don’t forget, I just got here a little more than a year and a half ago.”
First of all, this pair is roundly insane, and it's more than a little bizarre to see the supposed president of the United States doing an insult routine aimed at citizens of one of the smallest nations in Europe, and an ally to boot. Second, mutual defense, especially against the increasing military adventures of Russia, is the whole point of NATO to begin with. Opining that NATO members aren't worth defending—because, perhaps, the citizens of this or that country are irredeemably "very aggressive" people—is perilously close to saying that well maybe the United States just isn't going to honor its treaty obligations, when push comes to shove. Which is, of course, precisely what has NATO allies and U.S. lawmakers alarmed.
For this exchange Trump got roundly hammered, again, by Sen. John McCain, but it's not clear that any Republican will address Trump's latest bit of crackpot anti-diplomacy in any more substantive, non-tweet-based way. Trump continues to erode our most long-lasting alliances in fits of personal spite. He's out of his gourd and lacks the basic emotional stability to be president, much less the raw knowledge. But McCain and the others still, even now, refuse to check his behavior via anything but terse statements of powerless concern.