Trump Is Entertainment For Folks Who Can’t Afford The Price Of A Concert Ticket Or A Comedy Club

But Putin's Intentions Are No Laughing Matter

And Trump’s routine is getting tired and he has to get more and more outrageous to keep the sheeple coming (and buying the merch). On Saturday he went a little too far with one of his idiotic transactional jokes: how he told the head of “a big country” that he would tell Putin to attack him if he didn’t pay up. He claims, at least in his head, that he deals with NATO allies as though he were trying to get a permit to build a high-rise in an area zoned for single-family homes. Watch the video from his get out the vote rally in South Carolina:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkK5vWNIK1I

Michael Gold wrote that Señor Trumpanzee claims to have told the leaders of NATO countries that he would ‘encourage’ Russia ‘to do whatever the hell they want’ to countries that had not paid the money they owed to the military alliance.

Trump did not make clear whether he ever intended to follow through on such a threat or what that would mean for the alliance, but his comment at a campaign event in South Carolina— a variation of one he has made before to highlight his negotiation skills— is likely to cause concern among NATO member states, which are already very nervous about the prospect of a Trump return. Trump’s suggestion that he would encourage Russian aggression against allies of the United States— for any reason— comes as Republicans in Congress have pushed back against more aid for Ukraine in its war against Russia, and as European officials have expressed concerns over possible Russian aggression on NATO’s Eastern side.”

Some European officials and foreign policy experts have said they are concerned that Russia could invade a NATO nation after its war with Ukraine concludes, fears that they say are heightened by the possibility of Trump returning to the presidency.

In a statement, a White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, called Trump’s comments “appalling and unhinged,” adding, “Rather than calling for wars and promoting deranged chaos, President Biden will continue to bolster American leadership and stand up for our national security interests— not against them.”

Trump has previously expressed his belief that support for NATO is overly burdensome on the United States, saying the alliance drains its financial and military resources. His campaign website says that the country must re-evaluate the organization’s purpose.

He has in the past recalled privately telling NATO members that the United States would not defend them from Russian attacks if they were in arrears. Last year, he claimed during a campaign speech that “hundreds of billions of dollars came flowing in” to NATO after he made that threat.

Jonathan Chait noted that Trump “has despised NATO since the 1980s, and when he was president, his aides believed he wanted to pull the United States out of the alliance completely.” He agreed that Trump’s routine was “likely exaggerated or made up completely (one obvious sign of Trump’s fake stories is that he is always being called ‘sir’ in them), but what he said nonetheless reveals his attitude toward the United States’ most important alliance.

Trump has long depicted NATO as a protection racket, in which America’s allies pay up or else they get invaded by Russia. His defenders have sought to sanewash this disturbing idea by treating it as just Trump’s way of encouraging NATO allies to spend more on defense— see, Trump isn’t a Russia simp, they say, but a kind of hawk.

During his presidency, many allies did implement an (already-planned) increase in military expenditures, and NATO supporters tried to sell this to him as a Trump “win” forcing the allies to pay their “dues.” But Trump has refused to take this win, because his goal isn’t actually a stronger NATO, but a weaker one.

Trump has claimed that Russia never would have invaded Ukraine if he were still president. He has also insisted his presidency would put an end to wars. But it’s clear a second Trump term would create incentives for Vladimir Putin to undertake even more risky military adventures.

The risk of a second Trump presidency bringing a destabilizing war in Europe is now enormous. Whether or not Trump actually would directly urge Russia to attack allied countries he considers to be deadbeats— or perhaps whose leaders merely fail to flatter him sufficiently— the fact that he has already publicly suggested this is provocation enough. He has now floated the idea that the United States would abandon its NATO allies. That bell can’t be unrung.

Anne Applebaum has not been entertained by Trump's clownish pronouncements about NATO. She reminded her readers in December that "Institutionally, and maybe even politically, leaving NATO could be difficult for Trump. As soon as he announced his intentions, a constitutional crisis would ensue. Senate approval is required for U.S. treaties—but the Constitution says nothing about congressional approval for withdrawal from treaties. Recognizing this gap in the law, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine and Republican Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation, which has already passed the Senate, designed to block any U.S. president from withdrawing from NATO without two-thirds Senate approval or an act of Congress."

But none of that would necessarily matter, because long before Congress convenes to discuss the treaty, the damage will have been done. That’s because NATO’s most important source of influence is not legal or institutional, but psychological: It creates an expectation of collective defense that exists in the mind of anyone who would threaten a member of the alliance. If the Soviet Union never attacked West Germany between 1949 and 1989, that was not because it feared a German response. If Russia has not attacked Poland, the Baltic states, or Romania over the past 18 months, that’s not because Russia fears Poland, the Baltic states, or Romania. The Soviet Union held back, and Russia continues to do so now, because of their firm belief in the American commitment to the defense of those countries.

This deterrent effect doesn’t come just from the NATO treaty, a bare-bones document whose signatories simply agree in Article 5 that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” Deterrence comes from the Kremlin’s conviction that Americans really believe in collective defense, that the U.S. military really is prepared for collective defense, and that the U.S. president really is committed to act if collective security is challenged. Trump could end that conviction with a single speech, a single comment, even a single Truth Social post, and it won’t matter if Congress, the media, and the Republican Party are still arguing about the legality of withdrawing from NATO. Once the commander in chief says “I will not come to an ally’s aid if attacked,” why would anyone fear NATO, regardless of what obligations still exist on paper? And once the Russians, or anyone else, no longer fear a U.S. response to an attack, then the chances that they will carry one out grow higher. If such a scenario seems unlikely, it shouldn’t. Before February 2022, many refused to believe there could ever be a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

...Over time, all of America’s allies would begin to hedge. Many European countries would cozy up to Russia. Many Asian countries would calculate that, as Kaine puts it, “I guess we need to get closer to China, just as a matter of self-preservation.” To avoid invasion, pragmatic leaders near China or Russia might begin to take more seriously the commercial and political demands from the world’s second- and third-largest military powers, respectively. At the same time, many political parties and heads of state (both in and out of power) backed by Russia and China—or Iran, Venezuela, Cuba—would have a compelling new argument in favor of autocratic methods and tactics: America, a country whose image has already been severely damaged by Trump and Trumpism, would be seen to be retreating. Over time, American economic influence would decline too. Trade agreements and financial arrangements would change, which would have an impact on American companies and eventually the U.S. economy.

Tom Nichols suggested we leave aside “Trump’s record as a serial liar who lives in a world of his own fantasies. Trump’s comments today are a lot more dangerous than most of his unsettling puffery, and Americans should refuse to let this statement pass as if it were just another distasteful lump in the rancid stew Trump regularly serves up to his faithful. Instead, we should concentrate on the more terrifying problem, a reality that exists independent of Trump’s imaginary ‘sir’ conversations… Americans outside of Trump’s personality cult— at least those who have retained any ability to be shocked— should be stunned at his kind of betrayal of American principles and America’s allies. Here in the United States, we have become accustomed to treating Trump like an angry child, ignoring his outbursts the way parents ignore a toddler who shouts threats and claims to hate mommy and daddy during tantrums. But other nations do not see an overaged juvenile; they see a man who once held the keys to the U.S. nuclear arsenal and could once again become the commander in chief of the American military. They are watching him because they believe— as they should— that he is telling them exactly what he’ll do if he returns to office.”