{"id":531796,"date":"2026-07-08T20:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T20:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/531796\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T20:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T20:06:11","slug":"sabre-rattling-to-tremendous-love-erratic-trump-dominates-final-hours-of-nato-summit-nato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/531796\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabre-rattling to \u2018tremendous love\u2019: erratic Trump dominates final hours of Nato summit | Nato"},"content":{"rendered":"

An erratic and at times irascible Donald Trump<\/a> has said he felt a \u201ctremendous love\u201d from western leaders at the Nato summit, only hours after lambasting them over their defence spending and not helping the US in attacking Iran.<\/p>\n

The US president\u2019s mixed messaging dominated the final hours of the two-day gathering in Ankara, Turkey, beginning with him publicly calling Iran\u2019s leadership scum and renewing his demand for control of Greenland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He then adopted a softer tone in a private meeting of 32 Nato<\/a> leaders in the late morning, where he did not mention Greenland or other earlier criticisms, and instead told allies that \u201cwe want to remain with you\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great meeting, there was a lot of love in that room, a lot of unity,\u201d Trump said soon after at a bilateral meeting with Ukraine\u2019s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which included a surprise offer to licence the manufacturing of Patriot air defence missiles to Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump concluded by hosting a rambling press conference that barely addressed Nato topics, but where he praised Turkey\u2019s strongman president, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan<\/a>, talked up the US economy and said he was \u201cNo 1 on TikTok\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"TrumpTrump on rampage at Nato summit: what does it mean for Ukraine? \u2013 The Latest<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the shift from angry critic to Nato supporter \u2013 \u201cif there\u2019s one word that comes out of today it\u2019s unification,\u201d Trump said at the end-of-day press conference \u2013 will be hailed as a victory for the alliance whose stability been called into question.<\/p>\n

The final summit declaration, signed off by Trump and 31 other alliance leaders, affirmed the countries\u2019 \u201cironclad commitment\u201d to article 5, which declares that an attack one Nato member is an attack on them all.<\/p>\n

But there was also no announcement of the date for the next leaders\u2019 summit, due to happen in Albania, where anti-Trump and anti government protests are taking place<\/a>, amid hints it would not happen until 2028.<\/p>\n

Nato summits have not always taken place annually but the overwhelming concern in parts of Europe<\/a> is that Trump\u2019s grandstanding at such events risks giving hope to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, undermining deterrence and alliance unity.<\/p>\n

European leaders were concerned Trump was in a bad mood after a dinner on Tuesday night at the Turkish president\u2019s compound in Ankara, and had agreed not to mention the 4-1 loss<\/a> suffered by the US team against Belgium earlier this week.<\/p>\n

It appeared that their worst fears were being realised when Trump appeared on Wednesday morning with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, and began with a lengthy monologue airing a string of grievances with Nato and several individual members, as well as attacking the leadership of Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump said he was \u201cvery upset with Nato\u201d and complained that alliance members \u201cdidn\u2019t want to help us with the number one state sponsor of terror, that\u2019s Iran\u201d, a reference a refusal by European countries apart from the UK to allow the US to publicly carry out bombing missions from Europe\u2019s airbases.<\/p>\n

There was a specific jibe aimed at the UK, which did not initially allow the US to use RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire for bombing missions in Iran before the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, changed his mind and allowed limited attacks on Iranian missile sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United Kingdom wouldn\u2019t let us use the island for two weeks, so we had to fly back,\u201d Trump said, reiterating complaints he made against Starmer and Britain in the spring as the Iran war continued without the regime in Tehran collapsing.<\/p>\n

The introduction next to Rutte became a litany of complaint. \u201cGreenland is a big problem for us,\u201d Trump said as he renewed his claim the self-governing Arctic territory \u201cwas very important for the United States, but it\u2019s not important for Denmark\u201d.<\/p>\n

Earlier, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said as she arrived that Denmark would defend \u201cevery inch\u201d of its own territory and emphasised that Greenland was \u201cof course not for sale\u201d.<\/p>\n

There were familiar comments about Nato defence spending from Trump, despite last year\u2019s agreement by all members, with the exception of Spain, to lift national defence budgets to 3.5% of gross domestic product by 2035 \u2013 and so bring spending by Europe and Canada in line with the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very upset with Nato, that we pay far, far too much,\u201d he said. \u201cBillions and billions of dollars, too much, because it\u2019s unfair, because we\u2019re protecting them, so we protect them, but they\u2019re not there for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fresh ire was reserved for Madrid given its decision to reject the 3.5% target. \u201cSpain doesn\u2019t agree to anything, and you shouldn\u2019t carry them,\u201d Trump told Rutte. \u201cI don\u2019t want to do any trade with them, all right?\u201d the president said, turning to Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, who \u200creplied: \u201cYes, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rutte for his part tried to contain Trump through a mixture of flattery and occasional determined interruption. It was a strategy that appeared to calm him down as he praised Trump for persuading European Nato members to increase defence spending and match the US as a proportion of economic output.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou did what [President Dwight] Eisenhower tried to do,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s your win.\u201d Trump, interrupting, responded: \u201cThat\u2019s why I like him.\u201d Soon afterwards, however, he was asked if he considered the ceasefire with Iran ot be over, prompting him to say he believed it was: \u201cI don\u2019t want to deal with them any more. They\u2019re scum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Itovershadowed what Nato had hoped would be billed as a \u201cdelivery summit\u201d following last year\u2019s 3.5% spending pledge. More than $50bn of international arms contracts were announced during the summit, including a 12 country commitment to develop deep strike missiles with ranges from 300km to more than 2,000km.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An erratic and at times irascible Donald Trump has said he felt a \u201ctremendous love\u201d from western leaders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-531796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}