557
submitted 5 months ago by breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca to c/politics@lemmy.world

Donald Trump told the president of the European Commission in 2020 that the US would “never come help” if Europe was attacked and also said “Nato is dead”, a senior European commissioner said.

Multiple news outlets said the exchange between Trump and Ursula von der Leyen at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020 was described in Brussels on Tuesday by Thierry Breton, a French European commissioner responsible for the internal market, with responsibilities including defence.

“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” Trump said, according to Breton, who was speaking at the European parliament.

According to Breton, Trump also said: “By the way, Nato is dead, and we will leave, we will quit Nato.”

Archive

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 64 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

On the other hand, why is Europe depending on the US for their own defense?

They’re not. That’s kind of a weird thing to say, if you have any understanding of the situation.

The point of NATO is to present a unified front against the ever-present authoritarian threat in the region that’s been ongoing since WWII, and the US as a founding member has spent more on their military by orders of magnitude, so has had an outsized voice in NATO.

If they pull out those resources, that would hurt the coalition because, again, with their military spending being more than ten times the next ten countries combined, they’re the silverback gorilla in the room, and losing that against countries willing to throw their entire population as human cannon fodder into conflicts because they don’t care about human costs would hurt a lot. What happens when Russia decides to reclaim the rest of the countries Putin thinks are rightly part of their federation, because Putin has delusions of becoming an historical tsar? What happens when Trump’s US backs Putin in that effort?

Your few guns will not fix any of this. Your few guns will not even help stave off anything in your own county. That’s never how this has worked. This will be ushered in while you get your groceries and watch Netflix, with no clear enemy to fight, after an authoritarian has been voted in as president, as everything else is just a Tuesday.

I appreciate that you think you can head off the next major fascist regime because you’re armed, but that’s not how this works. You will never have a target to shoot at. You will be just like average Germans in the 1930s, waiting for the moment it has gone too far, and then in the late 40s trying to figure out when that moment actually happened.

e: also, there are no ‘orange shirts’. Your terminology is tres bizarre. It’s Brownshirts or red caps. That’s an embarrassing mistake to make.

[-] drewofdoom@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago

I mostly agree with your response, except for chastising OP about the color of the shirt. They start by mentioning brown, then parenthetically say "orange" as an unveiled reference to Trump.

This is because Trump is known to use a LOT of bronzer that turns his skin an unusual orange color. So what OP was trying to do was to relate the brownshirts to the presumed task force that Trump would create if he became a dictator.

[-] JustZ@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

Your few guns will not fix any of this. Your few guns will not even help stave off anything in your own county. That’s never how this has worked. This will be ushered in while you get your groceries and watch Netflix, with no clear enemy to fight, after an authoritarian has been voted in as president, as everything else is just a Tuesday.

OP knows this deep down. People who cling to guns and control over their personal property do so because they feel out of control as to the big things, and if they are honest they can admit it.

this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
557 points (97.4% liked)

politics

18073 readers
3223 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
  2. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  3. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
  4. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
  5. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  6. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS