Donald Trump’s latest provocation — reciting an old conversation where he said he’d let Russia do "whatever the hell they want” to NATO members in arrears — had officials in Europe going back to that time and remembering it somewhat differently.
Several European officials who interacted with Trump at multiple NATO summits said they couldn’t recall the version of events the former president and current Republican front-runner shared with a rally of supporters in South Carolina, nor that he ever went as far as saying he’d invite a Russian attack.
They have memories of Trump repeatedly hectoring members who were falling short of NATO’s spending target at multiple meetings and goading them to pay up fees in return for being protected. In fact, during the 2018 summit in Brussels, Trump called a hastily arranged news conference to address reports that he had privately threatened to pull out of the post-World War II alliance if countries didn’t quickly increase defense spending.