SOTS 2nd Hour: Trump at NATO, Day 2 of Powell Testimony

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:16)

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Donald Trump (0:51)

Tremendous things have been accomplished, as you probably noticed. Listen to a lot of wonderful speeches from the heads of a lot of wonderful countries. But I want to thank you for joining us at the conclusion of a highly productive NATO Summit in the Netherlands. Want to thank them for the royal treatment they've given us. Couldn't have been nicer. And it's a beautiful country. Really a beautiful country. Coming in, I saw the most beautiful trees. In fact, I want to bring some back with me.

I want to also thank I had I had breakfast this morning with the king and queen and their incredible people. I called I said your central casting beautiful people, great people, big, beautiful heart. And I enjoyed that. And also NATO Secretary General Mark Rothe, who's been terrific. He's been a friend of mine, used to be right here running this wonderful country. Now is the NATO Secretary General is doing a fantastic job. And the Prime Minister, we appreciate everything you've done. And as you know, last weekend, the United States successfully carried out a massive precision strike on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. And it was very, very successful. It was called obliteration. No other military on earth could have done it. And now this incredible exercise of American strength has paved the way for peace with the historic ceasefire agreement. Late Monday, and we call it the 12-day war. I spoke to a few people. I guess that just sounded like the right name. It was a 12-day war. And we think it's over. I don't think they're going to be going back at each other. I don't think so. Not only have we dealt decisively with the critical threat of Iran's nuclear program, which was what I wanted, I said Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I've said that for 15 years, long before I decided to do the political thing. But we've also reasserted the credibility of American deterrence, which is like no other. The people at NATO said this. Never been anything. You know, I rebuilt the entire military during my first term. And we have a great military. We have great generals. I got to know the good ones and the bad ones. We kept the good ones. Over the past two days, I was honored to participate in the NATO Leaders Meeting and also had extremely good individual discussions with the King and the Queen, Secretary General Rutte, and the Prime Minister. Great discussions, very knowledgeable people, major focus of our conversations at the summit was the need for other NATO members to take up the burden of the defense of Europe. And that included the financial burden. As you know, it was 2 percent and we got it up to 5 percent. And they said a couple of them came up to me, one in particular said, we've been trying to get it up to 3 percent for 20 years, and we haven't been able to, and you got it up to 5 percent. So they're going to be, most of them, I guess, almost all of them are going to be contributing now, 5 percent, a number that people are surprised at, but you need it today. The United States accounts for two-thirds of all NATO defense spending. Since I began pushing for additional commitments in 2017, believe it or not, our allies have increased spending by $700 billion.

I said to people, you don't have any money. And a lot of them weren't paying. And so I started the process and I picked it up as soon as I got back, which is six months ago. And following my election last November, almost all have accelerated plans to reach the 2 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent, and then ultimately very quickly 5 percent. And all of this is going to be done very quickly, almost immediately. And you probably know this as well as I do. I'm sure they've been talking about it. It's really been a big focus. In a very historic milestone this week, the NATO allies committed to dramatically increase their defense spending to that 5 percent of GDP, something that no one really thought possible. And they said, you did it, sir, you did it. Well, I don't know if I did it, but I think I did. This will be known as the Hague Defense Commitment, which is pretty good, pretty appropriate. When the allies reach this number, it will add more than $1 trillion a year. Think of that $1 trillion per year to our common defense. And this is a monument really to victory, but it's a monumental win for the United States, because we were carrying much more than our fair share. It was quite unfair, actually. But this is a big win for Europe and for actually Western civilization. For years past, administrations failed to get most allies to contribute even the 2 percent. I remember when I came here, we had four countries that were up to 2 percent. And I remember Poland was there, a couple of them were there. But most of them were, we had 28 at the time, as you know, it's increased a little bit. And they've agreed now to more than double their budgets in all cases. And Europe stepping up to take more responsibility for its security will help prevent future disasters like the horrible situation with Russia and Ukraine. And hopefully, we're going to get that solved. Last week, they lost 7,000 soldiers, mostly soldiers, but they're also getting hit in Kiev. They're getting hit in some of the towns also.