On Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said that if President Donald Trump wanted support from United States’ allies, he should stop “trash-talking them.”
Partial transcript as follows:
RADDATZ: Senator, if we could just close on this, Trump has continued to blast NATO allies who are not supporting opening up the Strait of Hormuz. A president can’t pull out of NATO, of course, but he could pull troops out. Are you concerned about that?
KAINE: Yes. I mean, the president has been trashing NATO for years, long before he was president. And in this term, the tariffs that he has imposed on our allies, the language that he uses, calling Canada, a NATO ally, a 51st state, threatening the attack of Greenland, a part of Denmark, another NATO ally. He’s really hurt NATO. And then he starts a war without consulting with them that has a huge effect on NATO allies’ economy, and then gets mad that they won’t join in. I mean, it’s like you don’t — you don’t sucker punch somebody in a bar and then blame your buddies when they don’t join the fight with you. I mean, the — if the president wanted the support of allies, he should have valued allies and respected them rather than putting tariffs on their economies and trash-talking them.
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