One of my favorite TV channels is Memorable Entertainment Television (MeTV) because of its reruns of American TV popular shows of the \u201950s until the \u201990s.<\/p>\n
But what I watched on Fox News (FNC) live after 3am (9am Brussels time) on Wednesday, July 11, 2018, qualifies just as well as Memorable Entertainment Television. http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/world\/2018\/07\/11\/trump-claims-germany-controlled-by-russia.html<\/p>\n
It was both surreal and fascinating. What am I talking about?<\/p>\n
At the NATO Summit breakfast in Brussels, President Trump wasted no time in repeating his demands for European allies (and Canada) to spend more on defense, saying they should do so immediately. He opened his appearance at the breakfast with an attack on Germany, saying its gas deals with Moscow made it a \u201ccaptive to Russia.\u201d \u201cGermany is captive of Russia because it is getting so much of its energy from Russia,\u201d Trump said, referring to Berlin\u2019s deal for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. \u201cEverybody\u2019s talking about it all over the world, they\u2019re saying we\u2019re paying you billions of dollars to protect you, but you\u2019re paying billions of dollars to Russia,\u201d emphasized the president. He added that \u201cGermany is totally controlled by Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president was referring to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would bring gas from Russia to Germany\u2019s northeastern Baltic coast, bypassing Poland and Ukraine, and doubling the amount of gas Russia can send directly to Germany. The project is opposed by the United States and a few others European Union members.<\/p>\n
The president then repeated his wider accusations against the NATO members as a whole for failing to pay their dues. \u201cOn the top of that, Germany is just paying a little bit over of one percent, whereas the United States, in actual numbers, is paying 4.2 percent of a much larger GDP. So, I think that\u2019s inappropriate also. We\u2019re protecting Germany, we\u2019re protecting France, we\u2019re protecting everybody, and yet we\u2019re paying a lot of money to protect. Now, this has been going on for decades. This has been brought up by other presidents, but other presidents never did anything about it, because I don\u2019t think they understood it or they just didn\u2019t want to get involved,\u201d pointed out the president. He continued: \u201cBut I have to bring it up because I think it\u2019s very unfair for our country, it\u2019s very unfair to our taxpayers\u2026 I don\u2019t think it\u2019s fair to the United States. So, we\u2019re going to have to do something because we\u2019re not going to put up with it, we cannot put up with it, and it\u2019s inappropriate,\u201d concluded Trump.<\/p>\n
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was caught off-guard and he pushed back softly, stressing that NATO members have been able to \u201cwork together despite their differences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump lashed back: \u201cBut how can you be together when a country is getting its energy from the person you want protection against or from the group that you want protection? You\u2019re just making Russia richer… Explain that!\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump said as he arrived at the breakfast that the situation is \u201cnot fair to the taxpayers of the United States, but we will make it fair\u2026 They will spend more. I have great confidence they\u2019ll be spending more,\u201d he later predicted.<\/p>\n
Here is the VIDEO that captures the moment of truth in all its dramatic unfolding:<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QqjJvveODK<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump exposed in a spectacular way, in front of millions of home viewers, how the Europeans milk money from the United States for \u201cprotection against Russia,\u201d while they give millions of dollars for getting supplied with oil and gas from the same, supposedly \u201cenemy,\u201d country.<\/p>\n
Trump is not the first U.S. president who brings this up to the European allies. But he will be the first U.S. president who will definitely do something to fix this decade-long anomaly.<\/p>\n
Tiberiu Dianu has published several books and a host of articles in law, politics, and post-communist societies. He currently lives and works in Washington, DC and can be followed on MEDIUM. https:\/\/medium.com\/@tdianu<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my favorite TV channels is Memorable Entertainment Television (MeTV) because of its reruns…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[930,17231,455,57],"class_list":["post-279921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-germany","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}