Regardless of what those countries spend, the US defense budget has little to do with their failure to meet those obligations.
You’re preaching to the choir. I’m totally in favor of NATO.
Also, I fully recognize that the 2% is referring to each country’s defense spending. I’m not sure what I said to suggest otherwise.
However, to say that the US doesn’t spend extra to cover those folks… I’m not sure that’s really true. With other nations weaker militarily, that has the natural effect that the US must cover more. Of course, I would not argue with the idea that even if they spent more, we’d still spend what we spend, due to various corporate interests. But at the same time, the reason why different nations are supposed to be spending 2% of their GDP, is that military defense costs money. If they aren’t spending it, then one of two things is the result… either the US is spending more to cover the slack, or the overall defensive capabilities of the alliance is less than it should be.
And it is the latter point that is the case. NATO’s capabilities are a shell of what they once were. Even the capabilities of the US in a lot of ways have declined since the end of the Cold War. But we are damn good at spending money on it.
No way Trump wrote this one.
Way too classy to actually be Trump. Wait until 5AM tomorrow.
No spelling mistakes or all caps. Who are they trying to fool?
Trump is just screaming and shit in the white house now. He is absolutely losing his shit.
Has anyone checked for the flashing lights in the White House tonight?
So… I’m not the only one sipping a bourbon, picturing this and giggling?
(bourbon optional)
Beer, but yes.
Wine for me. But I don’t have to imagine. I’ve got a hidden camera placed in the White House.
Now this tweet was definitely written by Trump.
There he is! That’s the Trump we know and love (to hate)!
If only you had listened to me and voted for the guy I halfheartedly endorsed in the primary, Moore wouldn’t have lost in a race that was fixed, somehow.
It’s awfully hard for a Republican to win in Alabama. The deck really is stacked against them.
Does he put quote marks around his tweets?
Of course he does because that’s a thing idiots do.
I wondered about that too, but if you click through to the tweet, the quotes aren’t there. Maybe they were originally but got edited out?
I think that’s a recent Discourse change.
Burns and other evangelical leaders were in the Oval Office on Monday to present President Trump an award in gratitude for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel. Then something unusual happened: “A spider almost ate him,” Burns said Tuesday.
In Burns’s account, he was standing behind Trump, who was seated at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, when he noticed a white spider the size of a half-dollar making its way up the president’s back.
“I just thought I was dreaming,” recounted Burns in a telephone interview. “Is that really a spider running up the back of the president of the United States?”
It was. Burns, for the record, hates spiders, but didn’t see any other choice but to step in. Before the spider got to the president’s neck, Burns whacked it — and Trump — with his bare hand.
“It made such a loud noise, and I think people were bewildered and were like, ‘What did you just do?’” said Burns, who then quickly tried to explain himself: “Security, please don’t shoot me! He had a spider on his back.”