Former President Donald Trump reminded many of how he missed his true calling as a carnival barker in a statement released Monday morning in which he took credit for NATO’s existence.
This may come as a surprise to anyone who paid attention to the former president’s rhetoric and remembers how he discussed pulling the United States from NATO, or how he openly withheld Congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine until and unless they dug up dirt on his domestic political rival, then-candidate Joe Biden.
Trump released the statement via his Save America PAC email as he appears to try to revise his time in office while global sentiment is unified against Russian President Vladimir Putin following his invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine.
Trump wrote:
I hope everyone is able to remember that it was me, as President of the United States, that got delinquent NATO members to start paying their dues, which amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars. There would be no NATO if I didn’t act strongly and swiftly. Also, it was me that got
Ukraine the very effective anti-tank busters (Javelins) when the previous Administration was sending blankets. Let History so note!
Trump repeatedly questioned the value of NATO while in office, which many political scientists believe was an effective weakening of a critical international treaty that benefited Putin and his desires for aggression and annexing further territories. The very annexing and aggression we saw unfold in Ukraine last week.
The United States’ standing in Europe fell so far during the Trump administration that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel notably stated that she could no longer count on the U.S. But the NATO alliance appears to have been strengthened since Biden took office, which is evidenced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent comments that NATO is now unified.
Over the weekend, former President Trump once again declined to condemn Putin’s aggression, but still hailed his invasion as “smart” while dismissing NATO leadership as dumb. And yet he appears to have the temerity to now try to take credit for saving the very treaty alliance that many believe he tried to dismantle.
Trump promptly followed his comments on NATO with an additional statement touting his energy policies.
If my energy policy had remained in place, where we were energy independent, and would have soon been bigger in production than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined, the world would have had no problems whatsoever. This war should never have started in the first place. If the Election
wasn’t Rigged, America would right now continue to have record-low gas prices, as it was under my Administration, and we would be supplying the world with oil and gas. Also, Russia would not have attacked Ukraine. Instead, we have a horribly tragic and unnecessary war, record-high energy prices, Inflation, no Border, crime, and chaos. Make America STRONG Again!
Trump suggests that he left the country as energy independent, but that’s not accurate. The United States began its trend towards energy independence in 2006, and it is true that it crossed the threshold of being a net supplier during the Trump administration. But it’s also true that in 2020, while Trump was still in office, the nation returned to being a net importer.
One can reasonably argue that Biden’s policies on fossil fuels have not helped the United States return to its status as a net exporter, but that did not begin under his administration.