The New York Times reports Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO.
Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.
In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.
Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.
Please Exit NATO
In case you have not noticed, I do not give a damn about political parties or what they stand for.
Rather, I stand for policies.
About Policies
I agree with Trump we need to leave Syria and Afghanistan. And I agree that NATO is a useless drain on US finances.
I disagree with Trump on the wall because it attacks a symptom not the real issue.
Every time I disagree with Trump I get accused of being a “Hillary lover”.
The fact is, I voted for Trump. And against Hillary, I would do so again. Hillary would certainly not threaten to exit NATO. Nor would she exit Syria or Afghanistan. I am very anti-war.
Trump makes me nauseous over Iran and many other things, but Hillary makes me nauseous over almost everything.
Politics
I am damn tired of partisan politics.
On the current course, we are headed for an extremely undesirable showdown between socialist nut cases and extreme right-wing warmongers. The nomination process is clearly geared towards extremism.
The vast majority of the US wanted neither Trump nor Hillary, but someone had to win.
The next election rates to be even worse.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
“I disagree with Trump on the wall because it attacks a symptom not the real issue. “
I agree. A wall makes about as much sense as putting doors on your house with locks. You don’t need those. The real issue is that you have stuff inside that people might want. You can easily keep people out by just eliminating all that stuff.
Trump isn’t leaving anything but the whitehouse. Not NATO, not Syria.
Too bad there’s no pill that will cure your TDS, Zardoz.
Voters run to the extremes when the middle becomes a corrupt cesspool. They are looking for anything that isn’t stinking and rotten. It is happening in the US and all across the West. Both US parties are too much influenced by their cohorts of corporate donors, most of which don’t give a damn about the United States of the people that live there. It is becoming very apparent. They are interested in control and ownership of an ever larger fraction of worldwide assets. NWO. One world government, one world market.
When the center is rotten, the extremes are the only alternative.
It was supposed to be Hillary vs. Jeb. Would there have been much difference in their policies?
Dear Mish, What is your solution to illegal immigration? Let the caravans come in? Abolish ICE? Fence not wall? What exactly is the problem if stopping illegal immigration is just attacking the symptom? Maybe you have addressed this somewhere and I have missed it. Thanks.
I think Mish’s solution was MANDATORY e-Verify (Trump PROMISED this but has done NOTHING) and stopping all welfare payments to illegals to remove the jobs magnet and free money magnet.
In my opinion USA also needs a wall on the WHOLE US-Mexico border (to stop illegals, to stop already deported criminals returning, to stop coyotes and human smugglers, to stop some of the drugs, to stop gangs like MS-13, to stop illegal immigrants dying when coming to USA through fenceless desert areas since about 150 bodies were just found in Arizona) and biometric entry-exit system tracking those people who overstay their visas and immediate alert to ICE when they overstay to stop overstays and USA also has to change the stupid bureaucratic interpretation that babies born to illegal immigrants and tourists are given birthright citizenship.
The birthright citizenship granting 14th amendment was passed to give citizenship to African slaves brought to USA and their babies and there clearly is “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and obviously tourists on vacation and illegal immigrants are NOT subject to the jurisdiction of USA since they are on vacation in USA or ILLEGALLY in USA.
Birthright citizenships started to be given to babies of illegals and tourist under Reagan after ONE supreme court judge William Brennan wrote as his personal opinion in one Supreme Court case footnote in 1982 that they should be given to illegals and tourists.
This was NOT a Supreme Court ruling, it was just his personal opinion aka dicta.
Reagan was either senile or did NOT care and therefore bureaucrats started giving out birthright citizenships to babies of illegals and tourists during the Reagan administration.
In addition to this Reagan was played like a fool by Democrats in 1986 when Reagan passed a mass-amnesty in exchange for border security.
Millions and millions of illegals got the amnesty and US citizenship but there was no border security since Democrats just forgot to do that after the amnesty was passed.
Together the birthright citizenship and mass-amnesty caused tens of millions of illegals to come to USA since they knew their babies would get US citizenship and they calculated that there would also be another amnesty for them.
Mass-amnesty has been tried under Bush in 2007 and Obama in 2013-2014 but they have failed.
Obama gave the partial dreamer-Amnesty with his pen and phone after the huge mass-amnesty for all illegals had failed in 2013-2014 despite Marco Rubio lying his head off as part of gang of Eight after Republicans supporting mass-amnesty had been primaried by angry Republican voters.
Also another point:
USA could STOP accepting asylum applications at ports of entry since Mexico is safe enough country and Mexico has an asylum system and even offered Caravan members an option to apply for asylum in Mexico.
The Geneve Convention on refugees ONLY forbids stopping or returning people to borders where they would be persecuted without first taking their asylum application and processing it.
Since Mexico is NOT persecuting these migrants USA should NOT take even ONE asylum application at ports of entry.
Here is a good article on the birthright citizenship issue:
Anti-war David Stockman sums up the situation perfectly:
Tucker Carlson did a great job making the case for withdrawing from NATO on Tuesday night’s show. The original reason for it’s creation no longer exists, unless the warmongers are able to warm up the US/Russia cold war again. Which leads to the BS about The Donald needing to be impeached because he prefers friendly relations with Russia. NYT is DEPLORABLE.
Tucker Carlson has never made a good case for anything. As for the cold war with Russia, it is as hot as it has ever been.
Agreed. Beware the articulate incompetents on the fringes, no matter what they’re selling at the moment. I think it’s the computer and the web that have brought us to this sorry state. Wingnuts of every stripe used to be confined to soapboxes in public commons. Now, they have word processors with spell checkers and a network over which to screech at the unassuming.
The situation was worse before because before internet the mainstream media decided what was reported and how it was reported and people were kept as stupid and ignorant as possible.
I agree.
Time to dump NATO already. Way overdue.
The spread of communism into Europe is no longer a threat. Nor is there any threat of Russia attacking western Europe. NATO is obsolete.
It’s no longer a threat because it’s already there? Most countries in Europe seem to be socialist now, to one degree or other.
But how about Russia attacking Eastern Europe (Poland, Baltics, Ukraine)? Kremlin’s nostalgia to get back that lost WW2 conquest is real.
P.S.Russia just dropped USS from USSR and added an F and now it is called RF or Russian Federation. If you think that changing moniker makes something of a less threat, then good luck. One way or another Russia is still authoritarian state bullying its neighbors that have way better human rights score than Russia.
They’re no threat to attack anyone. Crimea was an exception. It was their only warm water port and only port in that part of the world. Losing Crimea to them would be like the US losing San Diego and Pearl Harbor at the same time. And it was in response to our aggression in Ukraine. They didn’t start it.
You won’t convince me that Russia is not a threat until I will see that Kremlin wants to solve territorial issues through diplomacy by applying the same rules on themselves as they are applying on others. So far Kremlin diplomacy works only one way, which is also known as bullying (a.k.a. being threat).
First, Kremlin should get on the same table with Finland and discuss Karelia (Russia conquested it in WW2). Should Finland get it back? Should Russia at least compensate Karelians who lost their land in WW2?
So you are saying that Crimea’s annexation was just an exception and Russia is actually not a threat and never was since USSR dissolved. Then:
I understand that not all schools in US teach recent European history and you may not be aware of some facts. But USSR/Russia was acting like a pig in Eastern Europe during the Eastern Europe’s occupation. And they still are acting the same way by feeling entitled to their WW2 conquests where they artifically messed up population.
Ah yes, Lord Haw Haw brought back from the 1940’s. You didn’t say how you feel about Trump selling us out to Russia Mish, but the fact that you want to abandon our allies in Europe says it all anyway.
“You didn’t say how you feel about Trump selling us out to Russia…”
BS propaganda and you know it, RC.
Wait I thought it was Hiliary and OBamanation who sold out to the Russians. You must have gotten the Uranium one deal mixed up.
What about European allies sticking to their obligations?
How did Trump sell the United States out to Russia?
We need to leave NATO yesterday! With a combined economy ~ 5X that of Russia, Europe needs to find a spine and find their own way in the world. “Failure to launch” is not an option. We waste too much of our treasure there.
Many European countries have cut their military funding and train less troops and have stopped conscription since they thought NATO will save them so no need to fund their own armies properly and no need to train their own soldiers.
European countries need to get their act together and train their own soldiers to protect them and fund their own military.
Besides Russian economy is completely dependent on selling oil and gas to Europe and any Russian leader would have to special kind of stupid to attack their customers.
Germany is already hugely dependent on Russian gas with Nord Stream 1 pumping lots of gas every day and once the Nord Stream 2 is completed and Germany gets rid of Nuclear power in 2024 then Germany will be totally dependant on Russia. (totally stupid and incompetent decision by Merkel in response to Fukushima to get some Green voters to vote for her party CDU, one should NEVER be so dependent on Russia as Germany will be after 2024).
Russia has also recently completed Turkstream to Turkey and there are pipelines planned or being built and some partially ready to pump the Russian gas from Turkstream to Greece and Italy in one pipeline and to Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary in another.
Many European countries are also dependent on Russian gas flowing through Ukraine like Austria, Slovakia, Czech and Poland and Germany gets a lot of gas through there also .
So basically Russia is trying to tie large parts of Europe to become dependent on Russia.
I believe Putin is paranoid that Russia could be attacked or there could be a Russian Spring sponsored and supported from abroad similar to what happened in Ukraine and therefore tries to tie Europe to become dependent on Russia economically while at the same time crushing opposition in Russia with complete media control by state owned TV and Putin-friendly oligarch owned TV and newspapers and always starting investigations of many leading opposition figures around election time so they are ineligible to take part in elections and arresting and even have special forces beat demonstrators if there are too many demonstrators to his liking.
When one considers how concentrated media ownership is in USA and how one-sided and anti-Trump it is and how Trump was investigated based on bogus Democrat funded opposition-research dossier and by corrupt Hillary loving FBI and DOJ leaders and bureaucrats and how Trump supporters were violently attacked in parts of USA it is almost like Democrats and the billionaires giving their election funding got hold of Putin’s manual how to keep power and used it to try to get Hillary elected…
The logical time to disband NATO was when the Cold War ended nearly 30 years ago. Of course, that didn’t happen, and the only explanation is that the MIC still finds it useful. The “drain on US finances” Mish cites here is a feature, not a bug.
The MIC still wields massive power, both overall and specifically within the Trump admin. In other words, we’re not leaving NATO anytime soon.
How much weapons (in dollar terms) US exports to Europe and how much it imports from Europe?
If US leaves NATO, then those contracts would be terminated and Europeans would start to buy “Made in Europe”.
I think there is a great chance that US benefits greatly from being in NATO.
As long as there is a $800 Billion military budget we will be in wars around the world of our own making. The consumables must be used so they can make new ones. If you stand in the way of any of that you will be removed.
“Right-wing” = those that believe in smaller, limited government with less taxes that actually abides by the US Constitution as written.
So exactly who are you talking about with war mongering that have any actual power? McCain is dead was was for bigger government. Trump is trying to get out of the obama wars and avoid a conflict with Russia (for which he is savaged). Bolton looked at options but did nothing.
That’s the sales pitch, but of course the reality is vastly different. Who was the last R candidate who seriously believed in limited government? Goldwater?
Gotta admire your consistency and determination, 2banana. A partisan hack to the bitter end.
In my mind, the most fiscally irresponsible Presidents of the last hundred years were from worst to best: Wilson, FDR, Reagan, and LBJ. The most fiscally responsible Presidents were, from best to worst: Hoover, Coolidge, Harding, and Eisenhower. If you want to limit it to more recent history, the most responsible were, from best to worst, Carter, Clinton, Bush Sr, and Bush Jr.
There are some from both parties on every list. Fiscal imprudence is not limited to any one party, and it’s not a liberal-conservative issue, either.
….and even those on the “most responsible” list, are hardly different from Chavez at all…
“On the current course, we are headed for an extremely undesirable showdown between socialist nut cases and extreme right-wing warmongers.”
One of the best observations I have seen in quite a while. Moderate people are between two insane factions who are destroying America.