President Barack Obama has attacked Donald Trump on two fronts, lambasting his suggestion that the U.S. may not come to the aid of NATO allies, as well as his proposals for screening Muslim Americans. Referring to those proposals, he said:
“I think the kinds of rhetoric that we’ve heard too often, from Mr. Trump and others, is ultimately helping do [ISIS’s] work.”
Speaking in a wide-ranging interview on Face The Nation which aired Sunday night on CBS, Obama homed in on Trump’s remark that the U.S. may not defend NATO members if they have failed to honor their financial commitments.
Trump had told the New York Times in an interview last Wednesday:
“Many NATO nations are not making payments, are not making what they’re supposed to make…. Right now there are many countries that are not fulfilling their obligations to us.”
When asked what would happen if, for example, Russia attacked a Baltic member state that had not made its contribution, he implied that the U.S. may choose not to intervene.
Citing the remark as typical of Trump’s “lack of preparedness” on foreign policy, President Obama responded forcefully:
“There is a big difference between challenging our European allies to keep up their defense spending, particularly at a time when Russia’s been more aggressive, and saying to them, ‘You know what? We might not abide by the central tenet of the most important alliance in the history of the world.'”
President Obama went on to ridicule calls from Trump and Newt Gingrich for a clampdown on Muslim immigration and closer monitoring of American Muslim activity.
“If we start engaging in the kinds of proposals that we’ve heard from Mr. Trump or some of his surrogates like Mr. Gingrich, where we start suggesting that we would apply religious tests to who could come in here, that we are screening Muslim Americans differently than we would others, then we are betraying that very thing that makes America exceptional.
The Muslim American … community here feels deeply American and deeply committed to upholding the rule of law.”
The accusations escalated later on Sunday when Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort defended Trump’s stance on NATO. He commented on President Obama in an interview with ABC:
“He should be the one to be ashamed of what’s going on in the world. The growth of ISIS occurred as a direct result of the policies that he and Secretary Clinton established when they took office in 2009. The world’s an unsafe place today because of his failed leadership, not because of anything Donald Trump has done.”
Meanwhile, in his first public interview since winning the Republican nomination, a defiant Trump confirmed his stance on the possibility that the U.S. may not support NATO if the besieged member state has not paid its contribution to NATO funds. He told Chuck Todd of NBC’s Meet The Press:
“All I’m saying is, they have to pay. Now, a country gets invaded and they haven’t paid, everyone says ‘oh, but we have a treaty.’ Well they have a treaty too, they’re supposed to be paying. We have countries in NATO that are taking advantage of us. When they pay, I’m a big believer in NATO. But if they don’t….”
Watch this interview with President Obama on Face The Nation:
Featured Image: Screenshot Via YouTube Video.
