Cruz: Trump Would Give Victory to ISIS by Leaving NATO

Trump Had Suggested Reducing US Spending on Operations in Europe

Facing continued electoral defeats, Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R – TX) is increasingly desperate to portray front-runner Donald Trump as insufficiently mainstream, today blasting Trump’s foreign policy comments from earlier in the week.

Donald Trump suggested that America should withdraw from NATO,” Cruz falsely claimed, declaring that “nuts,” and saying that it would be “a tremendous victory for Putin, a tremendous victory for ISIS. ISIS would dance in the street.”

Which is doubly wrong, because ISIS generally doesn’t allow dancing either. At any rate, the transcript shows Trump saying “I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved. And I think we bear the, you know, not only financially, we bear the biggest brunt of it,” going on to say “I don’t think we’re treated fair,” and insisting Germany and other NATO members should be more involved, and spend more on NATO’s operations.

Trump’s comments to the Washington Post suggested that Ukraine, for example, was a much bigger concern for NATO’s European members than for the US, and that it was unfair for the rest of NATO to expect the US to spend huge amounts of money on Ukraine operations.

He elaborated later, saying not just NATO members like Germany, but nations like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Japan are expecting the US to spend many billions of dollars in their defense, saying he would negotiate a “much different deal with them.”

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.