Just days after we found out that President Trump has been part of a counterintelligence operation by the FBI to determine if he was actively working on behalf of Russia, the New York Times has published a report indicating that President Trump wanted to do something that Russia could only have dreamt of to this point.
The New York Times reports that on several occasions throughout 2018, the president had told administration officials that he’d like to pull the United States out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known as NATO.
According to the report, around the time of a NATO summit last summer, the president vented to his senior national security officials, saying that he saw no point in the alliance, and that it presented a drain on the American military.
Immediately following the remarks, then Secretary of Defense, James Mattis and National Security Adviser, John Bolton fought to make sure NATO would remain intact. A withdraw by the United States would not only diminish our influence in Europe, but it would have been like handing Europe over to Vladimir Putin to threaten, harass and influence with impunity.
NATO, signed in 1949 by President Truman, has been one of the major obstacles in Russia’s attempts to spread their influence and power throughout the West. The move to withdraw from NATO “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” and “It would be the wildest success that Vladimir Putin could dream of.” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.
When this report is combined with the report last week which indicated that Trump was investigated by the FBI for being a possible Russian asset, and another report earlier this week indicating that Trump took all the notes from the interpreter present at his meetings with Putin, concern over the president’s ties to Russia is exacerbated.