Conservative CNN Analyst Says Trump’s Threat to Leave NATO Raises the Hair on His Arm
Conservative CNN political analyst Coleman Hughes said that Trump’s threat to leave NATO made the hair on his arm stand up on Tuesday during a segment in which he also argued that Trump’s saber rattling might be strategic.
Hughes’s comments came after anchor Boris Sanchez noted that Trump has been consistent about “the idea that other countries are taking advantage of the United States when it comes to trade.”
“And yet his view of certain trade deals, even his view of certain world leaders and nations, has been troubled at times because of his rhetoric. He talks about having a good relationship with Kim Jong Un, someone who he called Little Rocket Man, just one example. And that’s an adversary, not an ally,” said Sanchez. “I know a lot of conservatives have lamented, at least through this election cycle, that they wish that it was someone running on his policies, just not him delivering the message and the distraction.”
“Trump, when Trump does things like threaten to pull out of NATO, it makes the hair on my arm raise because I think NATO’s an incredibly important alliance, not something that should be spoken so lightly of,” began Hughes in response to Sanchez’s points. “On the other hand, Trump, since, you know, for decades, he has prized himself as this great negotiator. And he has said that one of his negotiation strategies is to threaten something crazy in order to get some result, right? And again, this is his instinct, it’s an instinct that can be dangerous because you have to be willing to do the crazy thing, or at least, you know, South Korea has to actually be worried that he’s going to pull troops out, which I think would be a terrible idea. But they have to really be worried in order to actually respond.”
He continued:
And from Trump’s perspective, he has to make the crazy threat in order to get our NATO allies to pay the 2% of their GDP and so forth. But again, there are these examples where he calls the leader of North Korea, you know, Little Rocket Man, which is such a flagrant and flippant and dangerous move, and could have terrible consequences. So there are two sides to it in that he feels he can get concessions out of these countries by threatening crazy things. But on the other hand, you have to actually threaten those crazy things. And as a world leader of the most important country on Earth, you don’t really want your leader to threaten crazy things.
Watch above via CNN.
