On Thursday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles took a closer look at Trump’s handling of NATO — and how it was actually a “beautiful thing” to watch, contrary to what the media would have you believe.
“Only President Trump could do this,” said Knowles. Rather than watching NATO members fail to live up to their financial obligations while America foots the bill and shrugging, like all his predecessors, Trump demanded changes.
“It’s so lovely, it’s so refreshing to have somebody from outside the political process, who’s from outside Washington, who’s from outside the decades and decades and decades of minor little changes, small little things adding up to this big, nonsensical situation,” said Michael. “He comes in and he says, ‘This doesn’t make any sense, I got some fresh set of eyes, it doesn’t make any sense.’ A beautiful thing.”
Video and transcript below:
Only Donald Trump could do this. Only President Trump could do this. And, I’m a little harsh on Germany, I’m probably, you know, one and a half percent kidding, I’m ninety eight and a half percent serious…but you know, a little bit tongue and cheek. But he’s so right on this point, only President Trump could do this. Every other president goes up, they say, “you know NATO, they’re supposed to be paying more.” Just two percent of GDP, they’re not even doing that though….we’re paying four percent of GDP, you know, because we’re protecting them and they’re undercutting us at every turn and also they’re importing oil from Russia…we’re paying to protect Europe from Russia, Europe is using all of that money to pay Russia, this doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense…Past presidents can’t [say] that because they don’t want to rock the boat, this is an “emperor has no clothes” situation.
This is a situation where all of the presidents come in, and they say, “Well, this is NATO. NATO’s been around for decades and decades and decades and you know, that’s just the way it works and they don’t pay, they’re not fulfilling their commitments but, you know, we should pay, this is the way its always been. Oh, they’re giving out money to Russia. Well, you know, that’s not good….can’t change…can’t touch NATO.” By the way, The Cold War has been over for thirty years now but, “oh no, can’t touch NATO!” This relic of The Cold War, “no, no we can’t do that!”
And President Trump comes in and he looks at it and he says, “Hold on…I’m sorry, maybe I’m a little thick, maybe I’m a little stupid, because I haven’t been in Washington for my entire life, but the way it looks to me is that we’re paying more money than we’re supposed to be paying to YOU and you’re NOT paying the amount of money that you’re supposed to be paying, and then you’re giving all of that money to the people we’re supposed to be protecting you from! Tell me how that makes sense.”
And all of the smart people, all of the educated people, all of the expert people, they say, “Oh, well what a stupid question! Why would he ask that question? Oh, blah blah blah…”, and then he says, “well, what’s the answer?” and they say, “Oh, well that’s the way it is…” Well, the way it is isn’t going to work, is it?
It’s so lovely, it’s so refreshing to have somebody from outside the political process, who’s from outside Washington, who’s from outside the decades and decades and decades of minor little changes, small little things adding up to this big, nonsensical situation. He comes in and he says, “This doesn’t make any sense, I got some fresh set of eyes, it doesn’t make any sense.” A beautiful thing. The Left says Donald Trump is treating our allies like our enemies and our enemies like our allies, that’s not true at all, President Trump is just looking and he’s saying, “it’s not a friendship if you’re being taken advantage of.” If one friend is taking advantage of another so called “friend”, that isn’t a friendship, right? You gotta be on even footing and you can’t play soft with these people forever. World War Two ended seventy years ago.