Idiot which trump called an amazing theatrical experience, maybe less amazing if American Idiot is now directed at you dont want to be an American Idiot jeanne moos, cnn, new york. And thanks for joining us. Ac 360 with anderson starts now. Its like the world gone crazy this morning. Trumps performance was beyond belief. Good evening, everyone. That quote is from a senior european diplomat talking to cnn about the nato summit in brussels and what the president said there today. Now, this diplomat we should point out is not alone. The western allies have been talking about it. The russians vietnam be talking about it. The world, and tonight so will we. Yet as shocking as it may be to our allies, as troubling as it is to some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, it should not be surprising whether voters at the time gave it much credence. What happened today in brussels is what donald trump campaigned on. He said he was going to do this. Its the distilled essence of what he has believed
the president s suggestion is that nato is a dues paying organization that members chip in to some pot for collective defense, that they don t pay their fair share, they haven t been for years, and they owe the u.s. money. keeping him honest, as you ll see, that is simply not the case. it s not the way it works. it s not even close. it is, however, the way president trump believes it works, and he said so for years. number one, nato is obsolete. and number two, the people aren t paying their way. it s obsolete and we pay too much money. nato, we re going to have the people that aren t paying, they re going to start paying. it s obsolete. they were getting ripped in nato. they don t pay their bills. they are delinquent. so, as you see, he campaigned on the notion. he was electeded on it. he tweeted about it through the presidency, including on the flight over saying many countries in nato, which we are expected to defend are not only short of their current commitment of
concern is he either does not know or does not care to know, or worse that he does know better but chooses instead to disregard the facts to make some larger point. now just to be clear, you can believe a 70-year-old military alliance against soviet and now russian expansion is a good idea or not. you can agree or disagree with the central premise of it, that an take on one nato country is an attack on all. you can take issue with any number of aspects with nato, and later in the program we ll talk to someone who does just that however, the president s main grievance, which he expressed today at a summit breakfast simply is not factual. many countries are not paying what they should. and frankly, many countries owe us a tremendous amount of money for many years back where they re delinquent, as far as i m concerned, because the united states has had to pay for them. the president s suggestion is that nato is a dues paying organization that members chip in to some pot for collective