Darrell Castle talks about President Trump's meeting with NATO allies and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and the Democrat Party's reaction to the meetings.

Transcript/Notes

TRUMP SPEAKS THE TRUTH—IN PUBLIC

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report.  Today is Friday, July 20, 2018, and on today’s Report I will be talking about President Trump’s recent conference with NATO member states where he took them to the wood shed for not paying their agreed amount for defense.  I will also discuss the President’s meeting with Russian Leader, Vladimir Putin, in Helsinki, Finland on July 16th.

The President seems to be operating on a different premise from his predecessors, in regard to his dealing with NATO allies.  His premise is, perhaps, best described as one of reciprocity.  That is, the United States is no longer willing or able to underwrite the entire security of the West.  The Western Allies agreed as part of the NATO alliance to spend at least two percent of their GDP on defense, but of the 28 members, only the United States, and now, Turkey are doing it.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Western nations started cutting their defense budgets to the bone as did the United States, but they all agreed that even if they did not face the Soviet Union anymore, they would maintain the ability to resist armed attack.  Article 3 of the treaty requires members not just to spend two percent of GDP on defense, but to “maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.”

The President talked straight to them about their failure to meet the terms of the treaty.  He referred to them as “delinquent allies”, and said they treated the United States “like schmucks”, and America like a piggy bank.  He demanded from them the treatment for the United States that they expect from the United States; in other words, reciprocity.  Trump obviously has a problem with the Germans that goes far beyond what they spend on defense, which is almost nothing.  He said to them, “now we see the Germans whom we are protecting from Russia, collaborating with Russia, and deepening their dependence on Russian natural gas by jointly building their Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea.”  He went on to state publicly that other presidents have recognized these problems but didn’t do anything about them, and that is very unfair to the American people.

He’s right about NATO, it is obsolete, as he mentioned during his campaign.  NATO is an organization formed 69 years ago in the aftermath of the most destructive war in human history, to defend Europe from an enemy that no longer exists.  It was a reasonable fear that the Soviet Union would enslave all of Europe, as it did Eastern Europe, and it did have expansionistic plans.  That great cold war enemy no longer exists and the cold war is over despite the Democratic Party’s efforts to bring it back.  In light of those facts, if Europe wants to be defended against imaginary enemies it should pay for that defense with its own blood and treasure.

Trump’s appearance at NATO was apparently quite a show.  He paid no attention to their whining about Hungary’s, and now Italy’s, harder stance against migration from Africa and the Middle East, and after his tirade started, non-members Ukraine and Georgia, which are being considered for membership, were asked to leave the room.  He simply laid bare to the world what NATO has been unwilling to face publicly and that is, its decline, its non-existent enemies, its self-inflicted wounds, and the fact that, without the United States, it is obsolete and non-existent.

After the summit he didn’t stay for their parties and the usual schmoozing, but instead flew off to Helsinki, Finland for a meeting with Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, and that is what made the Democrats go ballistic.  They didn’t go ballistic when John Kennedy picked up the phone and called Nikita Khrushchev in an effort to avert nuclear war but now ...