Will you people now stop your panic over NATO?
"The United States' commitment to NATO remains very strong," Trump told reporters at a surprise news conference following an emergency session of NATO members held to address his threats.
And if you don't believe Trump, cue the nuanced:
"President Trump never at any moment, either in public or in private, threatened to withdraw from NATO," [French president] Macron said.
Mostly I'm happy that people who have spent my entire adult life denigrating NATO and the need for it are suddenly--since, oh, November 2016--really, really concerned about the health of NATO.
UPDATE: East Europeans get it:
While President Donald Trump's hectoring at the NATO summit alarmed many in the West, his message was mostly embraced Thursday along the alliance's eastern flank — the region that feels most threatened by an assertive Russia.
Staying diplomatically quiet while the alliance fails to spend enough to defend its members is not what the new NATO states with experience under the Soviet boot expect of Trump.
UPDATE: And British-American relations remain in the "special" category after
Honestly, the British lost a lot of credibility for criticizing Trump for his bluster given the giant "baby Trump" balloon they hoisted over London to unwelcome our president.
UPDATE: Oh good grief:
Trump intends to bring about the collapse of the liberal international order, in its commitment to open societies and its institutions.
Opponents of Trump tend to view him as an idiot who gets lucky--except for his diabolical plan to destroy the Western world.
And the author's inclusion of the European Union as one of the entities in the "liberal international order" that Trump wants to destroy (which is nonsense) neglects that the EU newcomer is hardly a foundation of the West; and that the institution is fact an anti-democratic body to its core, which will become an imperial state if left to gather power one intrusive cheese regulation at a time.
