NATO

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primary EZ iran war

2ND ON GREENLAND BS 1 26 NOTE // UN WHO WITHDRAW AGAIN

TARGET BELATED

prolly neglect?

SEE rules based international order

SEE FOREIGN POLICY

merri ok

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AN 8 26

Conservative goes ballistic as Trump paves the way for an attack on NATO

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AN 8 26

While President Donald Trump has repeatedly upended U.S. foreign policy over the course of his second term, a whistleblower from his first administration warns that over the past few days, the commander-in-chief may have “sold us out to our enemies” once and for all. This is according to Miles Taylor, who during Trump’s first term served as Deputy Chief of Staff in the Department of Homeland Security and famously revealed the existence of a resistance group within the administration. “The president,” wrote Taylor on Monday, “is abandoning our friends in all the places where we are needed most, and he is leaving behind vacuums to be filled by his dictator buddies.”

“Start with Korea,” said Taylor. “On Sunday, Trump ordered the Pentagon to ‘substantially reduce’ our joint military exercises with South Korea, complaining that our ally wouldn’t join his war with Iran and insisting the drills send a signal that is ‘inappropriate and hostile’ to our friends in North Korea, which he called ‘unthreatening and respectful.’ Ah yes, Mr. President, they are so ‘unthreatening’ that during your first term we had to urgently plan for the possibility that the hermit kingdom might launch a nuclear attack on the continental United States because Kim Jong Un was so ‘respectful.’ By the way, Trump announced America’s pull-back from its longtime ally days after North Korea launched a ballistic missile in a show of force against the South.”

“Then look at what else is happening in the Pacific,” wrote Taylor. “This weekend, the Navy pulled the USS George Washington out of Asia to relieve the exhausted USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East, leaving the western Pacific without a single American aircraft carrier, while China grows more aggressive toward Taiwan by the month. In fact, Taiwan has been holding emergency drills practicing what to do if Beijing orders an invasion. So why is America pulling back vital resources? Because Trump has no real interest in deterring China, where he has marveled enviously at Xi Jinping’s power and toyed with the idea of a ‘grand bargain.'"

Instead of opposing China, warns Taylor, “his ego has America mired in an open-ended war with Iran that is grinding down our ships, draining our missile stockpiles, and running our sailors ragged. So he’s sending more ships into that quagmire.”

“Finally,” says Taylor, “take a look at what’s happening in Europe. Satellite imagery revealed this weekend that Russia is building a network of secret drone bases within striking distance of NATO, with storage for a thousand attack drones at a single site. German authorities just found a suspected Russian drone rigged with explosives at the Leipzig airport. And Western planners are quietly admitting they have no real plan for NATO’s nightmare scenario, a coordinated Russian and Chinese strike on two fronts, at the very moment Trump has hollowed out the alliance that exists to prevent such a surprise attack.”

“Our enemies are gobsmacked by what’s happening,” Taylor predicts. “Under Donald Trump, we’ve walked out onto thin ice and handed our foes a sledgehammer. They must be fist-pumping in foreign briefing rooms.”

With all this in mind, Taylor arrives at a grim conclusion, writing, “Strategically, I believe we are in the most perilous hour of the modern era, and it is peril of our own president’s making. Donald Trump’s real National Security Strategy has been to get revenge against countries that criticize him, to advance his own self interests, and to build bridges to dictators with whom he can work once he leaves office. The great dealmaker has sold us out to the most dangerous nations on earth.”

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TURKEY SUMMIT TRUMP SAID IRAN DEAL DEAD BC THEY FIRED ON SHIPS IN OMAN LEG

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7/8/26 AN

President Donald Trump is at the NATO summit in Turkey where things grew contentious when he dropped a "diplomatic bombshell" on Canada.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Justin Trudeau kept getting threatening phone calls from Trump before he was replaced by Mark Carney.

At one point in a call, Trump told Canada he would kill a 118-year-old agreement that set the border with the U.S. and its neighbor to the north on maps and on the ground.

The agreement came when Canada was still handled by the United Kingdom, and at the April 1908 Boundary Convention, it was the U.K. that signed the agreement, not Canada. But Trump didn't care, telling Trudeau, “I tear that up, and your whole country unravels.”

Trump seemed confused that the law established the border, but the reality is that a slew of other agreements and treaties set the border, including the Treaty of 1818 and the Oregon Treaty of 1846.

According to the Journal, "Over dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trudeau’s envoys tried to dissuade Trump from absorbing their country. When one Trump aide pointed out Canada’s 41 million people would lean Democrat, the president came up with a neat solution: just split the northern neighbor into two states, one red, the other blue."

It's unclear how Trump would make that work, given that he has an approval rating in Canada of around 22 percent, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

When Carney took over, he asked for a review of Canada's dependency "on one particular country for its data storage, military hardware, payments processing and even food."

The report called it the first move for a country shifting the U.S. from an ally to a threat. It was a stark contrast to what NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte did, which is to encourage members that they had to do whatever it would take to keep the alliance together.

"In effect, a push to make Canada America’s 51st state had lighted a fuse of unintended consequences that would play out far beyond North America, as overseas allies asked themselves whether the U.S.-led alliance could truly last," the report said.

Carney's first visit as prime minister was not to the U.S. but to France, where he and President Emmanuel Macron discussed ways to dial down its dependency on the U.S.

"Canada had the critical minerals needed by France, whose state-backed tech firms were taking early steps into the U.S.-dominated spheres of AI and quantum computing. French diplomats joked that since Canada and Denmark share a land border on an uninhabited Arctic island off Greenland, that could make the North American country a legitimate candidate to gain fast-track membership in the EU. Carney laughed," the report said.

When Carney went to the U.K. next, they discussed how "they might band together if the U.S. left 'Five Eyes,'" the U.S.-led intelligence-sharing alliance made up of the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. While that idea never gained traction, it was discussed with MI6.

While in the U.K. his requested report about a world without America was finished and he was able to share it with Kir Starmer’s office.

Starmer wanted to be cautious, insisting that they had to find a way to salvage the relationship between the West and America.

“We don’t have a relationship to keep!” Carney replied, according to the report.

Informal advisor and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner was advising Canada to "produce a video that might persuade the president that they were serious about border security. Trudeau’s government hired a film crew to capture two Black Hawk helicopters and a sniffer dog on patrol. Instead of placating Trump, it seemed to fuel his interest in revisiting the placement of the border."

Carney's team, by contrast, began reading clinical and psychological studies on "impulsivity" to better learn how to deal with Trump. They believed that Trump's 51st state idea was really about "price discovery," when he throws out an absurd idea to see how the financial markets will react.

Other aides thought it was more about Trump trying to kick Trudeau while his poll numbers were down.

Either way, Carney has looked for new ideas to deal with the volatility of the American leader while slowly reducing reliance on the U.S.

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AN 5 26

President Donald Trump withdrew 5,000 soldiers from Germany earlier this month, and now allies are confused by the flip-flops about withdrawing soldiers from Poland.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies and defense officials were confused as Trump decided to send in 5,000 soldiers into Poland when he'd just decided to withdraw 5,000 other soldiers, ABC News reported on Friday.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on hand at the NATO summit this week, meeting with counterparts and explaining

“It is confusing indeed, and not always easy to navigate,” Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told reporters.

“We just spent the better part of two weeks reacting to the first announcement. We don’t know what this means either,” one of two officials told reporters anonymously.

For the past several weeks, it is as if Trump has forgotten or changed his mind about the goals and aims of his administration when it comes to the U.S. military footprint in Europe. There have been conflicting statements as Trump announced that he intended to draw down soldiers even more than the initial withdrawal from Germany, the *Associated Press said*.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz caused a stir at the end of April when he said that the United States was being "humiliated" in Iran.

"The problem with conflicts like these is always the same: it's not just about getting in; you also have to get out. We saw that all too painfully in Afghanistan, for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq," said Merz.

It was then that Trump announced the troop withdrawal.

U.S. Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, promised on Wednesday, "We’re going to stay well-synchronized with our allies moving forward."

The U.S. has about 80,000 soldiers stationed in Europe and the Pentagon is required by NATO rules to keep 76,000 soldiers there along with major equipment. The drawdown could only happen with consultation with allies. Ahead of Trump taking office, Congress passed a measure that protected the alliance by requiring that the U.S. not withdraw from NATO without congressional approval.

"The president's view is, frankly, disappointment at some of our NATO allies and their response to our operations in the Middle East," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday.

Writing for Carnegie Europe, Rym Momtaz alleged this week, "Trump has transformed the alliance from an instrument of deterrence against Russia into an instrument of coercion against Europe."

He called it "pernicious and dangerous."

an 5 26

Europe prepares for the 'unthinkable' as Trump throws NATO under the bus - Alternet.org

Sean Hannity: “The president is weighing a plan to punish NATO allies. He should.”

04/09/26 mma

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MMA

Fox News’ knives are out for NATO as Trump’s Iran war deteriorates

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 04/02/26

Fox News’ MAGA stars, unable to acknowledge that the war in Iran that President Donald Trump launched with their support is spiralling into a strategic defeat, have landed on a scapegoat: NATO and its member states, which were not consulted by the United States before it joined Israel in starting the war and have since refused participation.

Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity respectively denounced NATO on Wednesday as “kind of a meaningless ally” that “we’ve had it with” for purportedly “abandoning us.” Hannity and Ingraham each suggested that Trump should withdraw the U.S. from the alliance (which he is barred from doing unilaterally under a bill Secretary of State Marco Rubio cosponsored in the Senate that became law in 2023).

Trump has spent the last several weeks raging over the refusal by U.S. allies to send their navies into the active war zone to escort oil tankers and other commercial ships after Iran, in an obvious strategic countermeasure to the U.S. attack, closed the Strait of Hormuz. Over the weekend, Spain, Italy, and France refused to allow their military bases or airspace to be used by U.S. or Israeli aircraft involved in the war, triggering a new wave of vitriol from the president and his top aides.

Trump claimed in a Wednesday interview to be “beyond reconsideration” of the U.S. role in NATO after “they weren’t there for us” in Iran. (NATO is a defensive alliance — in response to the 9/11 attacks, its members deployed forces alongside the U.S. military in Afghanistan but are not bound by the treaty to participate in offensive wars.) In an address from the White House that night, the president urged the “countries of the world” to “build up some delayed courage. … Go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves.”

The looming strategic failure of the U.S. war in Iran — its regime is intact and in control of its uranium stockpile and the strait, and altering those circumstances that would likely require a risky escalation involving American ground troops — has placed Fox’s hosts in a bind. They have assured their viewers that the war is an historic success and appear unable to break with Trump due to his support among their viewers. That makes our NATO allies an appealing target as the war grinds on.

The president regularly tunes in to Fox to guide his communication and policy decisions. If he was watching before or after his speech on Wednesday, he heard vigorous support for pivoting from his inability to defeat America’s foes to punishing its friends.

Hannity: NATO is “a one-sided alliance,” by leaving “we'll probably save a lot of money”

Hannity, of the network’s three major evening hosts, is the one most committed to the U.S. war in Iran (which he had demanded for decades), the closest personally to Trump, and the loudest voice currently denouncing NATO.

Following Trump’s speech, he panned NATO as “a one-sided alliance where we only go and protect Europe” and suggested its member states had become too culturally Muslim. In response, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) uncorked a screed in which he called for the redeployment of U.S. forces from Europe because “when we needed them the most and when the world needed them the most to stop a religious Nazi regime from having a nuclear breakout, they took a pass.”

“I think that there's going to be a reevaluation and I believe America's contribution just went down dramatically, and we'll know more in the weeks ahead as this now begins to wrap up,” Hannity replied.

Video

Citation

From the April 1, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

Later in the broadcast, the host said it was “unimaginable to me that the NATO alliance would shatter” thanks to the purported refusal by its members to agree to what “should not be a controversial assist on their part.”

“I've got to imagine the ramifications of them abandoning us in this effort is going to — this is going to be deep, profound, and long-lasting,” he added.

Fox contributor Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state in Trump’s first administration, characterized NATO as “feckless, not to be able to convince their own people” of the importance of the Iran war, while retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, another former Trump administration figure, said the U.S. should withdraw from the alliance and form a new one.

“Yeah, I think you're right and we'll probably save a lot of money,” Hannity replied to Kellogg. “But the fact that they did not have a moral clarity when you're dealing with the No. 1 state sponsor of terror potentially this close to acquiring nuclear weapons is breathtaking to me. And this will have reverberations, I believe, going on for decades to come.”

Video

Citation

From the April 1, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

Ingraham: NATO is “kind of a meaningless ally” due to “weakness in Europe”

Ingraham had recently warned about potential downsides of the war, but quickly pivoted back in line with her colleagues. While previewing Trump’s speech on Wednesday’s broadcast, she claimed that “NATO turned out, in this case at least, to be what Donald Trump had predicted: kind of a meaningless ally, if allies at all.”

Her guest, the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano, responded with the evening’s most vigorous defense of the alliance. “I don't think NATO is the problem,” he said, instead pointing to “some very weak leaders inside NATO who have made some very cowardly decisions” and “look like complete yahoos.”

“What we're going to see is not NATO disbanded,” Carafano. “That's nuts. But what we're more likely to see is NATO step back up to the plate under pressure from Donald Trump, and countries throw out their own leaders because they’re weak-kneed yahoos.”

But Ingraham responded by saying that disbanding NATO should be on the table.

“Well, I'm not sure I agree with that,” she replied. “I think there's just a lot of weakness in Europe, period. Period, there's weakness. … We're so lucky we have Donald Trump as president of the United States.”

Video

Citation

From the April 1, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Watters: “We’ve had it with these people”

Watters joined in the NATO criticism on Wednesday, albeit in a somewhat less aggressive tone than his colleagues.

“The NATO allies, I put allies in quotes,” he said. “I mean, it's been a great alliance over the years. It's really kept the Russians off the continent until the Ukraine invasion. But it's been really one-sided, and now a lot of people are looking around at them saying no, you can't use the airspace. You can't use the base.”

“They've had it,” he added. “We've had it with these people. We love them, but we've had it.”

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AN 1 26

President Donald Trump is proving to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — and to the world — why other leaders may want nothing to do with his controversial statements, a New York Times columnist argued Sunday.

Columnist Ezra Klein wrote that America’s president now looks less like a world leader and more like a sulking hegemon.

“Everything Trump has done over the last week has made him look tawdry, addled and small,” Klein said.

Trump recently disinvited Canada from his so‑called “Board of Peace,” which he claims will be responsible for rebuilding Gaza. The invitation was withdrawn after Carney publicly said he had no role in the group. Most of Europe has also rejected Trump’s offer to join the “board.”

Klein wrote that Carney’s knack for “assessing [Trump’s] transactionalism” is what landed him on the president’s list of adversaries.

Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week accomplished several things, Klein argued. “First, Carney’s speech used the word ‘hegemon’ four times. He said the word ‘America’ only once, and then only to specify ‘American hegemony,’” Klein noted. “This is who we are now to our northern neighbors: not the America they once knew, or thought they knew, but ‘the hegemon.’”

In Davos, Carney said, “The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true.” Klein cast Carney’s role as refusing to “perform” and giving others permission to stop performing as well. Trump and Carney, he wrote, understand each other “all too well.”

Ahead of Trump's term, Klein said he spoke to advisors about the foreign policy philosophy of the second term. All of them said some version of the same warning that the U.S. never uses its power as leverage, and under Trump, it will.

Carney called that out, alleging that great powers of the world are “using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

Trump promptly responded in his speech that Canada only exists because of the United States. "Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements," said Trump.

Klein closed by calling the speech a "risk," as he rejected Trump's "nakedly transactional or thoroughly corrupt" worldview. Unlike Trump, Carney "intend[s] to do something more with his power than profit off it. It was a bracing speech, but more than that, it was a brave act. It was the kind of act that Trumpism suggests does not exist, the kind of act that rebuts Trumpism by simply existing."

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ALLIES MOVE TROOPS TO GREENLAND

AN 1 26

In a stark warning on the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, The Bulwark’s editor, Jonathan V. Last, suggests that under Trump, America may adopt Putinism as its domestic policy, having already adopted it for its foreign policy.

“Will Putinism take over American domestic politics, too?” Last asks, in an opinion piece titled, “This Is the End.”

“America has adopted Putinism as its modus operandi for foreign affairs,” he says. “Why would America not also adopt Putinism in its domestic affairs? Why would the American regime tolerate free and fair elections or the transfer of power to an opposition party?”

Pursuing the question, Last continued: “Are there examples of expansionist, rogue regimes which ignored international law and attempted to subjugate free people abroad, but respected liberal democratic outcomes that terminated their possession of power at home?”

To those who suggest Trumpism is temporary, Last suggests he disagrees.

“Many people comfort themselves by saying some version of ‘Donald Trump is an aberration’ or ‘This isn’t who we are,'” he writes.

But, he continues, “If Trump was an aberration and his actions did not have sufficient public support, then he would be removed from office. There are two mechanisms for doing so—impeachment and the 25th Amendment.”

“Trump will not be removed from office; which allows one of two conclusions. Either: Trump’s policies are supported by a sufficient percentage of Americans to be viable; or America’s constitutional order is so ossified that it no longer functions to safeguard the will of the people.”

“Neither of these is an alibi,” Last warns, noting that, “either one supports the conclusion that the problem is not Trump. It is America and Americans. This is who we are. Like it or not.”

Last also makes several other predictions:

“The days of intelligence sharing between America and our former allies are drawing to a close.”

“The death of NATO.”

“Germany, Poland, and Canada will acquire nuclear weapons. So will Japan. Sweden, Australia, and South Korea may develop nuclear capabilities as well.”

“Europe will draw closer to China.”

“Greenland will become disputed territory.”

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trump antagonist vestigial isolationism? transaction? plays into his myth that dem wimps get played and he will be better dealmaker, strict fr make euro-weenies pay their share; mostly he is just ignorant in foreign policy, reductionistic

all international orgs suspect (tho before wd get macho militaristic exemption, but now we have woke mil/corps

who suspect vax etc etc anti-commie new world order BS, now like Putin, troll caucus ukraine waR

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AN 1 14 26 Denmark military told to shoot back if the US fires on Greenland as Sweden send troops

Trump sends NATO an early morning warning

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AN 1 26

During the first few weeks of 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump has generated plenty of headlines — from capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to sending even more U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Minneapolis, Minnesota following the fatal shooting of unarmed 37-year-old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good in that city.

Trump's actions have plenty of defenders in MAGA media outlets. But MS NOW's Vaughn Hillyard, in an article published on January 13, stresses that Trump's "increasingly brazen assertions of executive power" are "running into an unexpected problem: They risk undermining the very goals they were meant to achieve."

"His threats to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark are accelerating European discussions about looking for alliances beyond the United States," Hillyard observes. "His public verdict in a fatal shooting by an immigration agent — delivered before a Justice Department investigation — risks further politicizing law enforcement. His administration's attempts to pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to reduce interest rates — culminating in the DOJ's investigating Powell for criminal charges — threatens to make it harder for Trump to appoint Powell's successor. And a week after the mission to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, the chief executive of ExxonMobil called the country 'uninvestable,' undercutting the economic rationale for the military intervention."

According to historian/author Ruth Ben-Ghiat — a New York University professor known for her expertise on the history of authoritarianism — authoritarians can become increasingly volatile when they are feeling desperate.

Ben-Ghiat told MS NOW: "Trump was recently on a downward path in terms of popularity with his base, and that is when autocrats do unpredictable things to assert their power."

A Pentagon official, interviewed on condition of anonymity, warned that Trump's belligerent foreign policy risks destroying alliances that have served the U.S. well for many years.

The official told MS NOW: "If Greenland goes, so goes the allies in Europe. The one refrain I've been hearing is we don't realize how many equities the U.S. has in Europe and how valuable Australia is, too, and they'll all pull the bridge out from over the moat."

After Good's death, Trump and his allies — including Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — defended the ICE agent who killed her. And according to MS NOW legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance, attacking Good can only hurt law enforcement in Minneapolis.

"If people don't have confidence in DOJ excessive force investigations, communities will spiral down without closure after events like the shooting of Renee Good," Joyce Vance said. "If the president fully breaks it, the consequences will be dire — we could become a country of endless protests with escalating violence from law enforcement on American streets."

*Read Vaughn Hillyard 's full article for MS NOW at this link.

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AN 8 25

During his four years as president, Joe Biden worried that if Donald Trump ever returned to the White House, it would pose a major threat to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Trump, during his first term, toyed with the idea of withdrawing the U.S. from NATO — whereas Biden, as president, aggressively championed NATO's expansion when Sweden and Finland opted to join the alliance.

Seven months into Trump's second presidency, the U.S. is still a NATO member. But author/military historian Phillips O'Brien, during an interview with economist Paul Krugman, stressed that Trump's return to the White House marks a dramatic change in U.S./Europe relations.

Krugman, on August 23, posted video of the interview on his SubStack page and also published it as a Q&A article. And O'Brien voiced major concerns about the United States' relationship with Europe.

"The United States is going to great lengths to antagonize its allies," O'Brien told Krugman. "I don't get it. None of this makes any sense to me."

IFrame Content

The author/historian said of the Ukraine/Russia War, "I think what happens to Ukraine will determine how Europe deals with this. If Ukraine is sacrificed, I think Europe is going to have a terrible future. Because it's going to be dependent on the U.S., which has basically sacrificed Ukraine to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's Russia. Europe might even break apart, structurally, such that you'll have the Central Eastern Europeans, the ones who want to stand by Ukraine, the Finns, the Baltics, the Nordics going one way and then the Western Europeans sort of pretending things are OK."

O'Brien added, "So, I think people are underrating the chance of Europe splitting over Ukraine, which is why it's so important, I think, that Ukraine comes out of the war in good shape."

According to O'Brien, U.S. allies in Europe will be paying very close attention to the outcome of the United States' 2026 midterms.

"Well, that's the key thing, isn't it? The 2026 midterms," O'Brien told Krugman. "I don't think people are paying enough attention, because they have to be run fairly. I do think the Democrats have a very good chance of winning them if they are run fairly and happen under normal conditions. But they could also be easily perverted…. I would say that 2026 elections will show not whether America can come back, but whether it has a chance to come back — or whether the period we're going into could be a lot longer and darker than we imagined."

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taylor swift is nato asset 1 24

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https://www.alternet.org/mike-johnson-2666920147/

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7 23 MTG

https://www.alternet.org/putins-enabler-mtg-defund-nato/

'Putin’s enabler': House Democrat torches MTG’s amendment to defund NATO

Brandon Gage

July 26, 2023

United States Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) on Wednesday introduced a motion to cut contributions to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by $73 million. Greene belongs to a cohort of right-wing House lawmakers who oppose arming Ukraine in its struggle against Russian President Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion.

Defunding NATO, with whom the US is allied in the coalition supplying Ukraine with defensive weaponry, was also an effort that former President Donald Trump undertook while regularly praising Putin.

"We continue to send hundreds of billions of dollars to NATO to defend Ukraine's democracy, even though they aren't even a NATO member nation. Investing in NATO security is an America-last policy," Greene said. "All increases in funding should be investing in the United States of America's security and the defense of our own border. President Trump was exactly right when he called on European nations to put the required minimum of two percent of their GDP towards NATO defense spending."

READ MORE: Greene blasted for 'parroting Kremlin talking points' on Biden Ukraine trip

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Virginia) panned Greene's proposal as a gift to the Russian dictator.

"Putin benefits from this amendment," Connolly stated. "Putin; a sociopath who is engaged in the most depraved behavior in our lifetimes, killing innocent men and women, targeting hospitals, targeting schools, showing no restraint. This Congress must stand with Ukraine. This Congress can never be seen as Putin's enabler. And that is what this amendment does. That's what's behind it."

Connolly added, "The author of this amendment has already said she wants to give zero to Ukraine. So we know the motivation behind the amendment. Let's reject it. Let's stand with Ukraine."

Watch Connolly's response below courtesy of The Recount or at this link.

READ MORE: Inside the MAGA-Russia plan to track and control your life

Face it, Ron DeSantis is losing because he’s bad at this

GOP senator blocking 265 military promotions falsely promoted his father’s WWII service: report

A deafening silence from Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s Black football players

'Joe Biden was not the president': Krishnamoorthi destroys GOP claims of election interference

Cannon’s ruling 'makes no sense': Legal analysts think Jack Smith will throw down over her latest

Trump’s post-election 'elite strike force' has been facing a 'legal reckoning': ex-federal prosecutor

Trump held undisclosed meeting with Turkey’s dictator Erdoğan at NATO

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement December 4, 2019

Not the first time a foreign power has been the first to reveal Trump met with their top leaders.

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fights w/ macron also at nato when they correct djt on facts

trump lashes out at ‘two-faced’ Justin Trudeau after video shows Canadian PM and others mocking him

President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at Canadian Prim

https://www.alternet.org/watch-cnns-jake-tapper-lectures-gop-senator-equating-nato-russian-aggression

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During the George W. Bush era, “neocon” (short for “neoconservative”) is a word that inspired feelings of contempt among liberals and progressives as well as the libertarian right (Ron Paul, Gary Johnson) and paleoconservatives (Patrick Buchanan). Neocons, during Bush’s presidency, became synonymous with the Iraq War, an abrasive foreign policy and huge federal deficits. But politics make strange bedfellows, and in the Donald Trump era—with the alt-right occupying the White House—liberals and progressives have been commiserating with prominent Bush-era neocons like Bill Kristol, Max Boot and David Frum.

Liberals and progressives frequently butted heads with Kristol, Boot and Frum during Bush’s presidency, but these days, they often show up as welcome guests on liberal-leaning MSNBC—and they share the left’s disdain for Donald Trump’s presidency. In 2018, it isn’t uncommon to find Rachel Maddow or another liberal at MSNBC engaging in some friendly Trump-bashing with a neocon from the Bush era.

Here are three Bush-era neocons who liberals and progressives often find themselves commiserating with during the Trump years.

Bill Kristol

Native New Yorker Bill Kristol is the son of the late Irving Kristol—who has been called the Godfather of Neoconservatism—and the founder of the Weekly Standard. Irving Kristol was a Trotskyist during his youth but later abandoned communism, became a right-wing Republican and championed an extremely interventionist foreign policy. And Bill Kristol was greatly influenced by his father, whose neoconservative ideology went way beyond believing in a strong military and peace through strength—neocons believe in nation-building, unlike libertarians such as Ron Paul and Gary Johnson or paleoconservatives like Patrick Buchanan (whose isolationist and protectionist views were a major influence on President Trump).

The neocon obsession with nation-building was very much at work when, after 9/11, Bill Kristol was encouraging the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein. The Iraq War turned out to be one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history, and many liberal and progressive critics of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s foreign policy found common ground with anti-interventionist right-wingers ranging from Buchanan to Paul to Justin Raimondo (the libertarian/paleoconservative known for serving as editorial director of Antiwar.com and suffering a landslide defeat of 72% when he ran for a House of Representatives seat against Rep. Nancy Pelosi in 1996).

But in 2018, the liberals, progressives and centrists at MSNBC often find themselves bonding with Kristol in opposition to Trump’s presidency. Kristol hasn’t moved to the left politically; he is as right-wing as ever, but he views Trump as a foreign-policy disaster—and MSNBC’s hosts, from liberal Rachel Maddow to centrist Chris Matthews—agree.Whenever Trump attacks the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Kristol is happy to appear on MSNBC and defend NATO. And Kristol is so fiercely anti-Trump that his nonprofit Defending Democracy Together is seeking a Republican candidate to challenge Trump in a GOP presidential primary in 2020.

Max Boot

Journalist Max Boot has written so many anti-Trump commentaries and spent so much time bashing Trump in the presence of liberals and progressives on MSNBC and CNN that it is easy to forget how conservative he is. But Boot has a very right-wing background. Boot was a foreign policy advisor for Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential run as well as a strong supporter of George W. Bush’s presidency and the failed Iraq War—and even though President Barack Obama was a war hawk who ramped up the U.S.’ military presence in Afghanistan considerably, Boot insisted that Obama wasn’t interventionist enough.

These days, however, Boot is way more critical of Trump than he was of Obama. Boot expressed his disgust for Trump by leaving the GOP and asserting that Trump has been so terrible for the GOP brand that he was hoping for a Democratic tsunami on Election Day. On November 7, Boot told NPR’s Noel King that while he was glad to see Democrats obtain a majority in the House of Representatives, the midterms still weren’t the “complete repudiation” of Trumpism he was hoping for. Boot wanted to see Democrats retake the Senate as well.

David Frum

Toronto-born David Frum is a rarity: a Canadian neocon. But he has been a U.S. citizen since 2007 (he holds dual citizenship), and he has been heavily involved in Republican politics for many years. Frum has a very right-wing resumé: he was a speechwriter for President Bush, he aggressively supported the Iraq War (which he now admits was a mistake), he endorsed Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential run, and he became a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (a neocon think tank). But Frum is not the type of Republican who is afraid to buck his party. Although he voted for McCain, he asserted that Sarah Palin was a terrible choice for a running mate. And in 2016, Frum voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton and made it clear that he was a NeverTrump Republican.

Frum hasn’t warmed up to Trump’s presidency one bit. He detests the alt-right’s isolationism and considers Trump to be a train wreck on foreign policy. And when Rachel Maddow needs a conservative to join her in some Trump-bashing, Frum is often available for an MSNBC appearance.

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