In a recent discussion with Alexander Stubb, who is the president of Finland, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria apparently thought it would be a cakewalk to get the newly elected European leader to say something negative and alarming about former President Donald Trump.
It did not go well for Fareed.
President Stubb ended up praising Trump for doing what is right.
Fareed, pushing a familiarly deceptive media line, asked President Stubb to comment on “what everybody is talking about,” namely that:
Donald Trump said he would tell Russia to do what you have to do, words to that effect, about NATO members if they hadn’t hit the 2% mark. What do you do about a president of the United States, the leader of the West, the leader of NATO, if he said that, assuming Trump is elected [in 2024].
President Stubb did not take the bait. Rejecting Fareed’s attempt to stir up dissension between Trump and NATO members, Stubb said that “the starting point is that Finland will get along with whoever is elected.” He then explained to Fareed an adult view of Trump’s remark:
We also know that former president Donald Trump is a transactionalist, and what he’s trying to do is push European states to increase their defense expenditure to 2% and I think he’s right in doing that because 20 out of 32 NATO members will have reached that by this Washington NATO summit.
That is, being rational, unlike what remains of our “news media,” Trump is a transactionalist.
Since Trump's expertise is making deals (he wrote The Art of the Deal), Trump knows that if one wants to get something done in the real world, one has to enter into “transactions” with the relevant parties. In those remarks about NATO, he merely let delinquent NATO members know that if they want continued U.S. military protection, they must make a transaction. They must give something, in this case, not even very much, just the 2% of GDP they had already promised to spend towards military spending.
President Stubb even pointed out that Trump has already been successful in this “because 20 out of 32 NATO members will have reached that by this [commitment] by the Washington NATO summit. In other words, NATO is already safer because of Donald Trump. Fareed thinks this is a new scandal!?
Fareed, however, who does, after all, work at CNN, pushes back, asking,
But is NATO entirely a transactional organization and do you think it is appropriate for the United States not to defend, not to defend a NATO member if it’s below 2% in its defense spending.
First, since transactionality is an aspect of rationality, Fareed, unlike Trump, is apparently worried about whether NATO members are rational.
President Stubb schooled Fareed that they are. Therefore,
“I think he [Trump’s] right in doing that [pressuring NATO members to pay their promised share].”
Fareed does not even appear to remember what President Stubb had already, just a few minutes prior, said to him: that NATO members have already been increasing their spending to make NATO safer as a result of Trump’s “transactional” pressure. That is, Fareed does not appear to have digested that President Stubb has just reassured him that NATO members, unlike the talking heads in U.S. “news” rooms, are quite rational and actually want to defend Europe more than they want to make high school debating points.
Indeed, President Stubb explained to Fareed that it was never in the cards, as Fareed had implied, that the United States would not defend NATO.
President Stubb, saying at one point that Finland in such cases is always “cool, calm and collected,” made this explicit:
“I am sure that the United States would continue to do that [defend Europe if it is attacked].”
It is difficult to see how “journalists,” who virtually never seem “cool, calm and collected,” can get so worked up about Trump doing what needs to be done to make NATO stronger and Europe safer.
Trump understands, as, apparently, Fareed does not, that he is not participating in a high school debate about international security. He is, rather, a businessman who must make successful transactions to prosper, and (unlike a member of the “Ivory Tower”) he is actually trying to get something done in the real world. Trump, in those comments that “everybody is talking about” (by which he presumably means “everybody in U.S. newsrooms"), is merely haggling over money, nothing more.
So, in fact, President Stubb gave a direct clear answer to Fareed’s question, “What do you do about a president of the United States, the leader of the West, the leader of NATO, if he said that [about the possibility of not defending NATO countries that don’t pay their pledged amount].” His answer is quite explicit: You say, “Thank you!” And you say that because Trump is trying to solve a real-world problem, not grandstand.
Indeed, had Fareed wanted to frame the conversation fairly in the beginning, he would, at least, have pointed out, as Sen. Marco Rubio and others have pointed out, that Trump, in those remarks about NATO, was not even talking about what he would do in the future, in his second term!
He was bragging about what he did in his first term.
It is a bit hard to work oneself into a state of hysteria about a comment made about what is already baked into the cake, but our “news” media seems quite capable of doing just that.