PRESIDENT TRUMP: […] So we have to talk about the billions and billions of dollars that’s being paid to the country that we’re supposed to be protecting you against. You know, everybody is talking about it all over the world. They’ll say, well, wait a minute, we’re supposed to be protecting you from Russia, but why are you paying billions of dollars to Russia for energy? Why are countries in NATO, namely Germany, having a large percentage of their energy needs paid to Russia and taken care of by Russia?
Now, if you look at it, Germany is a captive of Russia because they supply. They got rid of their coal plants. They got rid of their nuclear. They’re getting so much of the oil and gas from Russia. I think it’s something that NATO has to look at. I think it’s very inappropriate. You and I agree that it’s inappropriate. I don’t know what you can do about it now, but it certainly doesn’t seem to make sense that they paid billions of dollars to Russia and now we have to defend them against Russia.
SECRETARY GENERAL STOLTENBERG: You know, NATO is an alliance of 29 nations, and there are sometimes differences and different views, and also some disagreements. And the gas pipeline from Russia to Germany is one issue where allies disagree. But the strength of NATO is that despite these differences, we have always been able to unite around our core task, to protect and defend each other, because we understand that we are stronger together than apart.
I think that two World Wars and the Cold War taught us that we are stronger together than apart.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: But how can you be together when a country is getting its energy from the person you want protection against or from the group that you want protection?
SECRETARY GENERAL STOLTENBERG: Because we understand that when we stand together, also in dealing with Russia, we are stronger. I think what we have seen is that —
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, you’re just making Russia richer. You’re not dealing with Russia. You’re making Russia richer.
A cluster bomb of truth only Trump could pull off. Read the whole thing.
And…President Trump has moved on from Justine’s brilliant energy plan aka “do nothing at all”.
Canada has taken itself out of the richest opportunity to be a world energy super-power, leaving the USA as the go to place for ethical oil.
President Trump will eventually win this debate with Stoltenberg partly because of Canadian governmental mismanagement.
Trump is actually quite smart and not afraid to say what he thinks, unlike the rest of those weasle politicians. You can tell that when Trump speaks he speaks with authenticity. The rest (Like Stoltenberg) have adopted the language of obfuscation (“stronger together . . . blah blah”). Politics these days is dominated by manipulation and dishonesty — good for Trump.
stupidburg borrowed some of Just-In’s word salad!!
28 nations attended merely for the cocktails.
Trump isn’t a politician which is why he thinks common sense, and speaks it out for everyone to hear. In this instance, this is just exactly what I would have said and I’m one of the common folk. And a lot more common folk vote in the U.S. than ever now that the dam has burst open. Keep it going, Trump: you’re the best!! God is moving in wondrous ways.
Trump lost the popular vote by a very large margin and is broadly unpopular.
but unlike libs..he understands math
That is not reflected by anything he says. If he understands math then he’d be able to balance a budget, or run a casino without bankrupting it.
UnMe, that is hilarious.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s response to President Donald Trump is officially known in bureaucratic circles as “bafflegab”.
America needs to be protected from the Democrats who want to abolish ICE and open our nations borders the DNC is bigger threat then ISIS
Germany could increase their Military spending by half a percent of GDP this year financing it with their federal budget surplus. Merkel is dragging her feet on this because in her heart she does not believe Germany needs it. She is definitely the worst German Chancellor since you know who.
Why shouldn’t Germany be kicked out of NATO? Move all the infrastructure in Germany to Poland or Britain.
Because we understand that when we stand together, also in dealing with Russia, we are stronger. I think what we have seen is that —
They all talk alike don’t they? The hairlisp groper would have said the same exact thing save for a few uh… ….um…. uh…. added in.
james the deplorable disciple of kek: EXACTLY…I couldn’t have said it any better!
Be uhhh cause uhh in uhhhhh Canada we’ve uhhhhhhhhhh always known that uhhhhh when duhhhhhhh we uhhhhhhh stand uhhhh to ummmmmm uhhhhhh gether duhhhhhhhhhhh we uhhhhhhh are guhhhhhhhhh stronger uhhhhhhhhhhh…. add weird smirks and awkward fake smiles… Justard the Groper as “good looking” as Paul Bernardo as charming as Ted Bundy and with the intellect of a Turd.
Presidents tend to play to their base. In the case of B. Hussien Obama, his base was the media. Tump is playing to his base, the voters.
…sounds to me like NATO needs protection from Germany
Ya just gotta love the Donald…NO BS – no Sliding around an issue.
Here it is. How can you expect us to pay for your defense when you are attached to the hip with Russia.
How can you even be a Player in NATO..?
Imbeciles that shut their nukes down for fear of a Tsunami..? and went COAL and Russian Gas – BRILLIANT (not)
Tell me there was no $$$$$$$$$$$$$ involved here..? ha.!
Tell me George SOROS wasn’t involved here..?
EU Globalist TRASH….just like Justin
steakman: LOVE IT!!!!
Where you have coal, you have gas. EU-peons also shut down fracking. So they might even be gas independent. Duh.
Love the man. Trump is 10 steps ahead of everyone else, and he is so far ahead of our utterly juvenille PM that I don’t think he can even be bothered with the Pony anymore.
Trump holds all the cards and he knows it. His line Make America Great Again is not just a saying. He means it.
Right now he is going after the low hanging fruit. Wait to see the leftist elites really squirm when he moves on to the higher fruit. He has a master plan and will execute it.
What a beautiful time it is to be alive.
If Trump wasn’t around our Prime Minister would be propped up by the EU leaders as a useful idiot. But Trump is creating problems in Europe and soon in the UK, making those leaders weak-looking. The voters decide they want strong leaders like Trump (e.g. Italy, Austria, Hungary, Poland). And what does the media do? They invent the term populist meaning “for the voter” and then they turn that into something negative.
And if Canada was smart we would realize that being a close ally of a strong US is the best position for us. Sadly Liberals are pursuing the globalist strategy which is to weaken the US. It is very short sighted. I believe the US will prevail And we will be out in the cold.
Imagine our idiotic PM and his high school cabinet trying to find another 1% of GDP for NATO. Ha! Good luck. That would require them to stop wasting billions of taxpayer money on nonsense childish virtue signalling projects.
Keep squeezing Mr. President.
Technically it’s only another 0.8% or $12.2 billion while our deficit is set to balloon to $37 billion in 2018.
Thanks for the numbers Steve.
Our starved military would be over the moon to get another $12 billion, and that is $12 billion more per year!
Canada’s annual Federal Budget is about $300 billion. The Libs would have a hard time finding $12 billion but if they were willing to cut wasteful spending on useless pet projects they could easily find the money.
I agree, but would that extra cash even make it to the front line soldiers… DND is as corrupt as anything the Liberals touch.
I routinely use the cartoon Disney imagery of … ALL … the forest creatures holding hands and singing songs in unison to MOCK the anthropomorphizing of wild animals into some irrational, idealized, view of nature.
But to hear the Secretary General of NATO use similar imagery of all the NATO nations holding hands, and singing happy songs of unity in Esperanto (French for Macron) is shockingly dull witted. Jens Stoltenberg is an insipid Socialist sloganeer … which doesn’t give me a great deal of confidence in his military strategery skills.
Russia is perpetually broke, hungry and freezing in the dark. Why would it go to war against its European paymasters?
The US owes China $1.3 trillion. Why would China lob ICBMs at the US?
Israel possesses Jerusalem. Why would Muslims drop an a-bomb on Islam’s third holiest site?
Russia needs money. Russia is expanding its oil & gas sales into the EU including Germany. NATO considers Russia a threat. Why would the EU purposefully line Russian pockets if that country is a threat to the EU? A legitimate question asked by Trump. And where is all that renewable energy Germany developed? Why do they need to expand with coal, nat gas and oil?
hey Rizball, why would Germany finance the military and their equipment that they want protected from. Because like you, they are stupid people!!
Because neither Chicoms, nor koranimals nor Siberian Mongols can ever be accused of rationality. Because eating $hit and dreaming of subjugating their betters is normal for them.
“Russia is perpetually broke, hungry and freezing in the dark. Why would it go to war against its European paymasters?”
Well, possibly because they’re broke, hungry and freezing in the dark…..
Okay, your points have some validity but the fatal flaw in the argument is human pride and ego often override logic and reason. Maduro in Venezuela, Kim Jong Un in N. Korea are examples.
Which is exactly why the Third Reich rose in the first place … the worldwide (not just US) Depression. Adolph didn’t let the ‘crisis’ of poverty and misery go to waste (to co-opt a Democrat philosophy). He was sure to lay blame at the feet of the Jews, Gypsies … The French, English, and any other obstacle that got in the way of the idealized German superhumans.
“No, you’re just making Russia richer. You’re not dealing with Russia. You’re making Russia richer.”
And this, class is also why we should not be doing business with effing CHINA!
Yes!!
” But no other President brought it up like I bring it up. So something has to”
allow me to clarify the situation by plucking (NOT ‘out of context’ as the rhetorical fake arguement goes) a few words from Mr President Trump:
LIKE I BRING IT UP.
see, this is the distinct negotiating advantage Trump alone possesses, he DOESNT ‘owe’ ANYBODY any favours except, wait for it, the VOTERS who ultimately put him in the position to *exercise* said inclination to speak the truth.
If you ever meet some one from the press, punch them in the face.
Of course they will dox you, but still.
History tells us that perhaps defending Germany against their current energy supplier isn’t the prime reason for maintaining a military presence there but instead a disincentive for a significantly militarized Germany, again. Regardless, I don’t see why that should be the responsibility of US taxpayers.
Here’s the thing that gets me, we have SG of NATO saying:”…despite these differences, we have always been able to unite around our core task, to protect and defend each other, because we understand that we are stronger together than apart.”
And yet the same European and Canadian allies immediately react against the USA with complaints (and tariffs). Never do they respond with the same “despite our differences we need to unite because we share common values”. Never. Its one set of flexible rules for their disagreements and a different value set for US compliance.
Unfortunately, President Trump only knows half the story.
The Germans depend on American arms to blackmail Russia into giving Germany a deep discount on oil and gas. If the Germans had to pay the Russians what that fuel was really worth, the German economy would collapse overnight.
No more. Walk away, President Trump. Make the Germans pay Russia a fair price for that oil, and allow Russia to finally develop into the great economic power she would have been had the German-organized October Revolution not intervened.
If the Germans want to have another go at conquering Russia, let them do it themselves. I look forward to seeing the Russian army back in Berlin.
Bongo’s not planning any one on one face time with Trump. Really? After the Trumpster called him a backstabbing weakling following the G7 Trump wouldn’t give him the time of day.
The librano spindoctors are giving it their best shot but the reality is nobody wants to talk to Canada. We have zero influence at this soiree. Bongo is seen as a hollow suit by the International community.
Yeah but when the Canadian Government is dealing with our Euro ally’s we have Christia Freeland ending her sentences with, “hugs”… Girl Power! Plus we have the Groper and his fancy schmansy socks, so we’re okay too. Go Trump, the man is awesome!
Kumbaya nation.
I note the socks have been somewhat in abeyance lately.
England LOSE to Croatia … it must be Trump’s fault. The Home Secretary should have BANNED him for his HATE-Tweets … ha ha ha
Here is part of the discussion.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1016956445307400193
It is a must watch. The most beautiful thing I have seen in a long long time.
But Germany is also getting richer. That’s how exchange of goods works. If Germany were to get its energy needs met elsewhere (all other things including domestic restrictions on energy production equal), then Germany would have to pay more for its energy needs and Russia would just sell elsewhere.
Trump should just stick to getting these jerks to build up more defense capability. It’s also alarming reading the SecGen of NATO rely on weak sloganeering (we’re stronger together, etc) far far more than is acceptable.
‘It’s also alarming reading the SecGen of NATO rely on weak sloganeering (we’re stronger together, etc) far far more than is acceptable’
That’s how it has always been; Trump is the first president to call ‘shit’ on the eurocrats, rather than just stand around watching as it falls out of their perfidious mouths and dribbles down their chins.
“Trump is the first president to call ‘shit’ on the eurocrats”
Too bad he’s the least well-equipped to correct them, and the most likely to make them look good by contrast.
You think Obama was better equipped?
But it won’t. The GDR was one of the few countries where acid rain (remember that?) was ever actually a problem. The Russians insisted the GDR pay market price for oil. The east Germans refused, deciding instead to switch to the poor-quality coal that was the only significant fossil fuel source they had. The resulting pollution took years off people’s lives and nearly destroyed their forests.
Have you met any Germans at all, UnMe? Their arrogance is matched only by their meanness. It causes them physical agony to part with a pfennig.
Their country’s business model is maximizing their trade surplus at almost any cost. That means refusing to pay Russia more than a fraction of what Russian oil and gas are worth, and refusing to pay for the nukes they blackmail the Russians into giving them a discount with. The Americans pay for those.
Sure the Germans are getting richer—by robbing Russia blind.
“Have you met any Germans at all, UnMe? Their arrogance is matched only by their meanness. It causes them physical agony to part with a pfennig.”
ITT, mongoloids jealous of the superior intellect and shrewdness of most German folk, including my grandparents.
“Their country’s business model is maximizing their trade surplus at almost any cost. That means refusing to pay Russia more than a fraction of what Russian oil and gas are worth, and refusing to pay for the nukes they blackmail the Russians into giving them a discount with. The Americans pay for those.”
1) Citations needed
2) There is no such thing as a ‘trade surplus’
Don’t Tell the Germans there’s no such thing as a trade surplus they have one that’s worth over $300 billion for the year 2017.
If there is no such thing as a trade surplus … then why ‘retaliate’ in a trade ‘war’? You are suggesting there are no casualties in said ‘war’, so why fight it?
Superior intellect. Shrewdness. Of course. That superior intellect and shrewdness is why the Jews started taking over the German economy the minute they were emancipated, and laughed behind your back at how easily they outwitted you. “Goyishe kop,” they called you. German halfwit.
Of course, you didn’t appreciate being in debt to people Luther had told you were the children of the devil, so as soon as it became feasible to murder them all, you murdered as many as you could get your hands on.
(Your pious Lutheran ministers, of course, were pedophiles just like their Catholic competitors, who couldn’t get an erection unless they were torturing children to death—and knew that convincing their goyishe kop flock that the Jews had done it would be child’s play.)
The great contribution of Germany to the world? Marxian socialism—devised as a rationale for expropriating and murdering Germany’s Jews, without whom, no doubt, the German workingman could drink till he fell down every night, and not have to pay a pfennig. Humanity is not grateful. At all.
So Trump wants NATO members to raise their defense spending. Justin (on his Latvian Trip) made a sanctimonious statement indicating that decisions about Canada’s defense spending would be made in Canada. Now that in itself is not a problem, however, I could not help but wonder why our decisions about immigration and climate change, and foreign aid are not also made in Canada. For those things we simply follow the directives issued by the UN. (Many of the feminist policies and policies related to aboriginals also reflect mandates from the UN.) Really if we are in fact going to make our decisions re defense spending in Canada, it will be one of the first things we actually decide for ourselves under the current Liberal regime. I believe that Butts is the go-between (Canada and the UN).
“Germany isn’t any more dependent on Russian gas than it was during the Cold War, when no one doubted its loyalty to U.S. interests or the U.S. commitment to its protection. Russia accounts for as much as 40 percent of Germany’s imports of gas, but the share was even higher in the 1980s.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-11/russia-pipeline-doesn-t-make-germany-a-captive-mr-trump
Putin isn’t Brezhnev. Context matters.
The mental contortions that the anti-Trumpers go through are almost amusing. Almost. Most of the article is totally beside the point, a lot of blah, blah, blah. Then there is this (the heart of the matter):
“It’s true that Germany is trying to phase out nuclear energy and coal.”
“The pipeline (Nord Stream 2) can potentially add 55 billion cubic meters to Russian exports; last year, Russia supplied 53.4 billion cubic meters to Germany. That would be a large increase, but it still wouldn’t make Germany “captive” to Russia:”
Really, 108 BILLION 4 Hundred Thousand cubic meters of natural gas ….. suddenly cut off at the spigot ….. wouldn’t be catastrophic to Germany. Really? With nuclear power and coal generation eliminated, cutting natural gas wouldn’t hurt Germany? In what alternative universe does Bloomberg live?
… the universe of Globalist policy designed to make elitist corporate entities so enormously wealthy that they end up running a de facto worldwide government as they OWN the means of production and wealth … such that they OWN every politician and bureaucrat desperate to keep their government job.
Big corporate wealth runs the world … or did … until those pesky voters started thinking for themselves … and observing for themselves … that the coastal elites had no more use for them. They had been replaced by a new middle class … in VietNam, Malaysia, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, et al. Where the happy recipients of these new multinational corporate jobs would shut up about working conditions and pittance wages … they were just happy not to be scratching out a living breaking-down the electronic refuse of the West.
Back then they had nuclear and coal to fall back on. Apparently, that’s gone now.
Really enjoy reading that President Donald J Trump interrupts those that are wrong.
Repeatedly.
Clearly the NATO countries were hoping they’d never have to deal with someone that says what needs to actually be said.
When did Canada agree to the 2% commitment? Was it Harper?
Not that it matters we rarely live up to our pledges.