Trump Stuns With Answer on If NATO Should Shoot Down Russian Aircraft: ‘Heck of a Statement’

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he would like to see NATO fighter jets shoot down Russian aircraft violating NATO member airspace.

“I do want to play something he just said to reporters as he was meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky,” said MSNBC anchor Katy Tur.

“Do you think that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter their airspace?” asked a reporter in the clip Tur rolled.

“Yes, I do,” Trump replied.

“That was quick. Help me understand the president’s position right now on Russia,” Tur then asked NBC White House correspondent Vaughn Hillyard.

“But it’s a heck of a statement coming from this president of the United States. In the situation where Article 5 were to be invoked by NATO allies, there is a question of whether the United States under this Trump administration would be committed to defending countries that could face incursions from Russia. And what we have seen over the course of the last two weeks are Romania, Poland, and Estonia all reporting jets, drones, and Russian aircraft entering their airspace,” Hillyard replied, adding:

Yesterday morning there was an emergency UN Security Council meeting in which these concerns were raised and spoken directly to the Russian delegation who are here at the UN General Assembly. And the new UN ambassador from the US, Michael Waltz—his former national security advisor—suggested that NATO would not give an inch to Russia if they continued these provocations. But the question was whether the president would echo that today. And what you just heard, him sitting next to President Zelensky, hours after we should note the major airport in Copenhagen has been shut down over multiple drones in the region… It is not clear at this point in time, according to the UN General Secretary of NATO, whether in fact these were Russian drones. But the president suggested that the US would come to the defense and support the shooting down of Russian aircraft that enters NATO airspace.

And he was then asked whether the US would potentially support that with its own military. And he said it would depend on the situation. But he said that NATO had stepped up. We have heard now over the course of eight years him repeatedly attack NATO, calling for greater military spending among NATO countries. And the president just moments ago here at the UN General Assembly suggested that he was actually pleased with some of these actions.

The other part, though, that I think it is important to note is that, again, the president has allowed one of those deadlines that he has set for Vladimir Putin to enter into a ceasefire and bring his war to a close. For the fourth time this year, he has allowed a deadline to come and go after welcoming Vladimir Putin onto US soil. And the president was just asked at what point will he stop trusting Putin’s word, and he said he’d give him about another month.

We have heard President Zelensky repeatedly say in recent days that he needs the United States to step up and issue new sanctions, but he did suggest—Zelensky sitting there next to President Trump—that he liked his idea of putting more pressure on Europe to more forcefully stop buying oil and gas. A large part of that is going to come down to ultimately the close ally of the President, Hungary and Viktor Orbán, of course.

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.