What’s Trump’s Position on NATO

Hillary Clinton went too far when she claimed that Donald Trump said “we should pull out of NATO.” Trump has said that he would “certainly look at” pulling the United States out of the international security alliance, because it is “obsolete” and “is costing us a fortune.” But the Clinton campaign provided nothing indicating that Trump advocates pulling out now.

Trump, who has nearly clinched the Republican nomination for president, has been critical of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was established in 1949 by the U.S., Canada and 10 Western European nations to defend against the former Soviet Union. Trump’s main criticisms of NATO, which now has 28 member nations, are that the alliance no longer serves its founding purpose and that it is too costly to the U.S., which pays about 22 percent of direct spending by NATO, the most of any nation, according to budget information. The U.S. also pays a much larger portion of the organization’s indirect costs, NATO says.

During a campaign speech in Milwaukee on March 28, Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, said that Trump “wants us to pull out of NATO.” That was the week after Trump, during campaign events and interviews with the editorial boards of the Washington Post and the New York Times and others, talked about the U.S. role in NATO.

In an interview with CBS News’ John Dickerson that aired May 8, Clinton again claimed that Trump, whom she referred to as a “loose cannon,” wants out of NATO.

Clinton, May 8: Being a loose cannon is saying we should pull out of NATO, the strongest military alliance in the history of the world and something that we really need to modernize, but not abandon.

While Trump has gone so far as saying that, as president, he would consider pulling the U.S. out of NATO if it is not restructured, we’ve found no instance of him saying he wants to do so at this point. And the Clinton campaign hasn’t been able to point to an example of Trump saying that either.

In fact, it was during the interview with the Post, which initially brought attention to Trump’s feelings about NATO, that Trump said that he doesn’t want the U.S. to leave the alliance.