Trump Rages at ‘Paper Tiger’ NATO: Done ‘Absolutely Nothing’

President Donald Trump fumed at his NATO allies on Thursday during a Cabinet meeting, calling the key military alliance a “paper tiger.”

Trump kicked off the meeting by boasting about the U.S. campaign against Iran and taking a dig at former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which he claimed would have given Iran a nuke. Trump pulled out of the deal soon after it had gone into effect.

“Because they want to take over the Middle East, not just Israel. Certainly Israel would have been the first on their list. They would have used nuclear weapons — a nuclear. You don’t need too many of them. But they would have used a nuclear weapon on Israel and they would’ve used it on the other neighbors,” Trump claimed, restating his case for attacking Iran.

A longtime critic of NATO, Trump continued by jabbing the alliance:

And then they would come after us. And if we had a weak president, they would have done great damage. But fortunately, you don’t have a weak president. I knew what was happening. And I think we’ve been proven right. You know, they took one missile, went 2,500 miles. They supposedly didn’t have a missile like that.

They had no missile with that capability. But they shot the now-famous Ireland — the island that the UK was very afraid to give us, because they didn’t want to get dragged in. But we don’t want to get dragged into their wars, either. One thing — we’re very disappointed, I’ll say it publicly — we are very disappointed with NATO, because NATO has done absolutely nothing. And I’ve always said, 25 years ago, and I was somebody that wasn’t a politician, but I was always involved in politics, and I understood politics, I said 25 years ago that NATO’s a paper tiger, but more importantly, that we’ll come to their rescue, but they will never come to ours.

And I want you to remember that we said this. They didn’t come to our rescue. Now they all want to help. When they’re annihilated — the other side is annihilated — they said, “We’d love to send ships.” They actually made a statement, a couple of them, that we want to get involved when the war is over. No, it’s supposed to get involved at the war’s beginning, or even before it begins. We had the UK say — this is three weeks ago — “We’ll send our aircraft carriers,” which aren’t the best aircraft carriers, by the way. They’re toys compared to what we have.

But “we’ll send our aircraft carrier when the war is over.” I said, “Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you very much. Don’t bother. We don’t need it.” And we don’t need it. We don’t need them. We estimated it would take approximately four to six weeks to achieve our mission. And we’re way ahead of schedule. If you look at what we’ve done in terms of the destruction of that country — I mean, we’re way ahead.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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