Nikki Haley said it’s “chilling” that Donald Trump is encouraging Russia to invade NATO allied countries that he considers “rogues.”
Speaking at the former UN ambassador. On Saturday in South Carolina, Haley’s home state, Trump said that if he were president again, he would not protect NATO allies from Russia if he felt they were not paying their fair share.
Haley told Politico Playbook that her presidential primary competitor’s comments make Democratic President Joe Biden “look sane.”
“It’s the kind of comment that makes Joe Biden seem lucid,” he added in comments just days after Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur released a report questioning the president’s “diminished” mental faculties and memory. .
Haley says Trump’s comments also show that the 2024 front-runner “lacks moral clarity.”
The former UN ambassador. Nikki Haley responded to Donald Trump’s comments by stating that she would “encourage” Russia to attack NATO countries that are not paying their fair share.
The former president made the alarming promise while riling up a cheering crowd in Conway, South Carolina, on Saturday.
‘The president of a big country stood up and said ‘if we don’t pay and we are attacked by Russia, will they protect us?’ I said you didn’t pay, are you in default? He said, ‘yeah, let’s say that happened.’
“No, I wouldn’t protect you,” Trump said. “In fact, I would encourage them (Russia) to do whatever they want.”
‘You have to pay! You have to pay your bills.
Trump and other Republicans have long lamented that the United States pays the most on the world stage in certain alliances, such as the United Nations and NATO.
Haley is among those who condemned Trump’s comments telling NATO members to “pay up” or face threats from Russia.
“That should send a chill down everyone’s spine,” Haley said.
Among those condemning the former president was the White House, which called his comments “appalling and deranged” and argued that they “promoted dangerous chaos.”
A former Trump communications aide said the former president was emboldening Russian President Vladimir Putin with his nation already embroiled in a war with Ukraine.
Donald Trump claimed at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday that he would not protect “rogue” NATO countries from outside attacks, specifically from Russia.
“President Biden has restored our alliances and made us stronger in the world because he knows that the first responsibility of every commander in chief is to keep the American people safe and true to the values that unite us,” a House statement said. White.
“Encouraging the invasion of our closest allies by murderous regimes is egregious and unhinged, and endangers American national security, global stability, and our domestic economy.
“Instead of calling for wars and promoting unhinged chaos, President Biden will continue to strengthen American leadership and defend our national security interests, not against them.”
Trump’s former communications director, Alyssa Farah Griffin, wrote on Twitter that his statement that he would not help NATO allies was “music to Putin’s ears.”
Griffin, who now co-hosts The View, also called Trump a “sad old man” for mocking his opponent Nikki Haley because her husband wasn’t with her on the campaign trail because he is serving in the National Guard in Africa.
Haley sharply criticized Trump for questioning the absence of her husband, Maj. Michael Haley, from the campaign trail while deployed overseas.
“Military families go through a lot,” Haley told Politico. “And the fact that Donald Trump has never even come close to putting on a military uniform, that he’s never had that experience, that he’s never known what it’s like, shows why he keeps calling them fools and losers.”
She also questioned why other Republicans have not spoken out against Trump’s comment condemning her husband.
‘Why is there silence from the Republican Party?’ she questioned. ‘Where are everybody?’
‘Where are the Republicans standing up for our men and women in uniform who sacrifice for us and protect our country?’
DailyMail.com previously revealed claims that Haley cheated on her husband with two other men in 2008, and Trump apparently made a vague reference to the scandal in his comments.
However, prominent figures, including lawmakers, retired military officers, journalists and congressmen, expressed horror at Trump’s comments about NATO and Russia over the weekend.
A former Trump communications aide said the recent comments are “music” to Russian President Vlaidmir Putin’s ears. Trump has praised Putin on several occasions.
But Richard Grenell, who was Trump’s ambassador to Germany and acting director of National Intelligence in the final months of the Trump administration, backed his former boss.
The alliance does not “force” NATO members to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense; It’s a guideline the group agreed to work on in 2014, before Trump was president.
At the rally in South Carolina, Trump also repeated his often dubious claim that while president he forced European allies to pay more for defense.
‘NATO was ruined until I arrived. I said: ‘everyone is going to pay’. They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are they still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘absolutely not.’ “They couldn’t believe the response,” he said.
Another former ambassador, Michael McFaul, who was Barack Obama’s man in Russia between 2012 and 2014, said Trump did not understand how NATO works.
‘This is crazy. And 8 years later, Trump shows that he STILL doesn’t understand how NATO works! It is not a protection business. They don’t pay us to protect them,’ she wrote on Twitter.
Trump often claims that he single-handedly convinced NATO members to contribute more, but there is no account of this ever happening.
As McFaul explained, NATO funding also doesn’t work the way Trump often claims it does, and his boasts don’t match reality.
No NATO member fails to pay its share of the alliance’s $3 billion common budget, which is based on GDP and of which the United States pays 16 percent.
Trump, during a town hall in New Hampshire last month, also made the same claim, arguing that NATO was “taking advantage” of the United States.
‘European countries took advantage of… I want to use the S-word, but I don’t want to because I see some young, very good-looking boys in the audience, and I assume they are watching on television,’ he said.
‘But they took advantage of us in trade, and then they took advantage of us in our military protection.
‘Of the 28 countries at that time, only eight countries were paid. We were paying the difference.
‘And I went towards them. I told him: ‘if you don’t pay, we are not going to protect you.’ And they said, ‘Do you mean that?’ I said, ‘I’m serious.’ And the next day, billions of dollars poured into NATO.”
Trump threatened to withdraw from NATO several times while president, calling it “obsolete” and a waste of American resources.
This is despite the fact that the roughly $500 million the United States pays in direct financing is dwarfed by the $842 billion defense budget.
Congress was so concerned that Trump could unilaterally withdraw from NATO if he won a second term that it passed a law in December requiring the president to win a two-thirds majority of the Senate to do so.