Biden campaign blasts Trump for allegedly saying he wouldn’t defend Europe if attacked
"The only person he cares about is himself,” a Biden campaign spokesperson said.
President Joe Biden’s campaign attacked former President Donald Trump on Wednesday for saying that he wouldn’t protect Europe if it were attacked.
“The idea that he would abandon our allies if he doesn't get his way underscores what we already know to be true about Donald Trump: The only person he cares about is himself,” Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa told POLITICO in a statement.
The broadside comes a day after a senior European politician recounted how Trump privately warned years ago that America would not come to the EU's aid, as POLITICO reported in Brussels Playbook earlier Wednesday.
"'You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,'" Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020, according to French European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was present for their chat at the World Economic in Forum in Davos.
Trump continued: "'By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.”
Those comments demonstrate why Trump shouldn’t be reelected, Moussa said. The former president’s threats to weaken NATO and his cordiality with Russian President Vladimir Putin undermine Washington’s national security and strength on the global stage, he added.
“As president, Donald Trump spent four years cozying up to dictators and making our country less safe,” Moussa said.
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Breton's anecdote made during an event in the European Parliament in Brussels comes less than a week before the Republican primary voting begins in Iowa. Trump’s comments are unlikely to sway voters, as his skepticism of the transatlantic alliance is well established.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees member who helped spearhead a bill to prevent a president from withdrawing from NATO without congressional approval, also lambasted the former president, saying the alliance "is very much not dead."
"In fact, our commitment to NATO is stronger than ever thanks to my bill to prevent ANY U.S. President from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO—which Congress passed with strong bipartisan votes," he tweeted Wednesday afternoon. "We won’t abandon our allies."
