Fox News Audience Cheers When Trump Says He Told ‘Delinquent’ NATO Countries He Wouldn’t Defend Them Against a Russian Invasion

Members of a Fox News town hall with Donald Trump cheered when he claimed he told NATO allies he would not defend them from a Russian attack if they were not “paid up.”

On Friday, Sean Hannity showed previously unaired footage from his town hall in Iowa with the former president from the previous night. The host told viewers Trump stayed after the event to answer more questions.

After saying Europe is “screwing” the U.S. on trade, he pivoted to NATO.

“And what I did is, I told NATO, I said, ‘We’re not going to protect you any longer unless you pay up and billions–they didn’t believe me either, but they believed me enough. Billions and billions of dollars poured in. We had people that were totally delinquent.”

Trump then claimed he had a meeting with NATO leaders where he was asked about U.S. assistance against a possible Russian invasion:

We had a closed-door meeting. It was never talked about by the press because it was a positive thing. They only like to talk about negative things. But we had a closed-door meeting and you [Hannity] know about this better than anybody. And I said, “You know, we are protecting all of you people, but many of you people haven’t paid.”

Only eight nations including us were paid up and we were paying far more than anybody else to protect Europe!

And one person stood up, the prime minister of a country. It was only the prime ministers, the presidents, the top people. They said, “Does that mean if we’re attacked by Russia – used to be the Soviet Union when it was originally done – if we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?”

I said, “Are you paid up? Because if you’re not paid up, the answer’s no, I will not protect you.”

The audience cheered wildly.

“And that money came pouring in,” he continued. “We took in hundreds of billions of dollars.”

As president, Trump demanded NATO allies spend more on their militaries. In 2014, member countries pledged to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, but by 2018 only nine countries met that goal.

As the largest economy in NATO by far, the U.S. unsurprisingly has spent more money on its military than any other country.

Watch above via Fox News.