Former Secretary of State John Kerry took to social media to publicly scold President Donald Trump for his “disgraceful” behavior concerning our North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies and other Western countries. President Trump pressed our NATO allies for not paying enough in defense and admonished Germany for their “oil-and-gas pipeline deal with Russia,” on Wednesday in Brussels.
“I have to say, I think it’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia, where you’re supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia,” said Trump.
The former secretary of state went after Trump for his comments, though, oddly, Kerry voiced similar concerns regarding Germany’s energy when he served under President Barack Obama.
“I’ve never seen a president say anything as strange or counterproductive as President Trump’s harangue against NATO and Germany. It was disgraceful, destructive, and flies in the face of actual interests of the United States of America,” he wrote in a lengthy screed posted to Twitter.
“President Trump makes public adversaries out of our friends, and turns our adversary, who has been attacking America’s democracy, into his fawned-over ally,” he continued.
Kerry said Trump proved “he doesn’t understand how vital alliances have made a huge difference for the security of the United States and the lives of Europeans.”
The president “displayed a woeful ignorance of the work his predecessor’s administration did to increase European defense spending,” he added.
But in in May 2016, Kerry expressed concern about Germany’s energy plan — the same issue he’s currently slamming Trump for addressing.
“We’re also going to discuss one other specific issue of deep concern to me and to everybody here, and I think that’s the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,” said Kerry. “This project has provoked a very heated debate on both sides of the Atlantic, and we are convinced would absolutely have an adverse impact on Ukraine, on Slovakia, and Eastern Europe. And we cannot lose sight of that.”
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