Donald Trump is right about Germany and NATO

The most extraordinary sensation overcame me this morning – I found myself agreeing with Donald Trump.

Across my twitter stream had passed a White House tweet with a video clip of The President speaking robustly to the Secretary General of NATO at a breakfast meeting they were holding. Mr Trump made two points:

First Germany is a very rich country, it doesn’t spend its fair share on defence. It should do so immediately. Why should American taxpayers have to stump up all the time?

Second, Germany has built a huge gas pipeline to Russia and is buying huge amounts of gas from them. Americans are always being told Russia is a major threat but here’s Germany, reliant on America to keep it safe, totally dependent on Russian gas – which gives Russia potentially huge influence over Germany.

While always speaking a great deal, Mr Trump isn’t always the most coherent person around. Often he is the the embodiment of the truism “it’s not so much what you say, but how you say it that matters” so I have paraphrased him a little.

But check for yourselves here:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1016956445307400193

The extraordinary thing is, and hold onto your seats tightly here, he’s got a point. Come to think of it, why does the British taxpayer have to foot such a huge bill for our Armed Forces when Germany, which is bigger and richer than us, spends less as a percentage of its GDP? The answer is not that we should pay less, but that Trump is right: Germany should pay more to help defend themselves and us in NATO.

Mr Trump is also right when he says every US President since at least Eisenhower has said the same thing. Just not quite in the same way.