<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump took to social media Friday to chastise French President Emanuel Macron\u2019s calls for a \u201ctrue European army\u201d to defend the continent against increasing threats from Russia, China and other near-peer adversaries.<\/p>\n
In a Twitter post, Mr. Trump characterized Mr. Macron\u2019s claims as \u201cvery insulting\u201d to the long-standing mutual defense agreements between Washington and Paris, as part of the NATO alliance. In the Twitter posting, Mr. Trump also took France and other western European nations to task for not meeting the U.S. demand for NATO members to contribute two percent of their country\u2019s gross domestic product to the alliance\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Macron of France has just suggested that Europe build its own military in order to protect itself from the U.S., China and Russia. Very insulting,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote. \u201cBut perhaps Europe should first pay its fair share of NATO, which the U.S. subsidizes greatly!\u201d he added in the social media posting.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump\u2019s comments come days before he and Russian President Vladimir Putin are slated to meet with Mr. Macron in Paris, for commemoration ceremonies dedicated to end of World War I. Administration officials indicated Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin would hold a face-to-face meeting on the sidelines of the ceremonies, but that plan was later scrubbed by the White House.<\/p>\n
The young French leader voiced the need for a \u201ctrue European Army\u201d to fortify the continent\u2019s eastern borders, during an interview with Europe 1 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,\u201d Mr. Macron said, adding European leaders \u201cwill not protect the Europeans unless we decide to have a true European army.\u201d<\/p>\n
Citing the Trump administration\u2019s souring view on NATO, particularly its chastising of France, Germany and other alliance members for not paying their fair share toward Europe\u2019s defense, Mr. Macron said western allies on the continent \u201cneed a Europe which defends itself better alone, without just depending on the United States, in a more sovereign manner.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump took to social media Friday to chastise French President Emanuel Macron’s calls for a “true European army” to defend the continent against increasing threats from Russia, China President Donald Trump took to social media Friday to chastise French President Emanuel Macron\u2019s calls for a \u201ctrue European army\u201d to defend the continent against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8243,8244,414,34,267],"class_list":["post-18179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-worlds","tag-emanuel-macron","tag-european-army","tag-france","tag-politics","tag-war-conflict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}