US President Donald Trump speaks after signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on March 6, 2025.

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared not to know that the only time that NATO’s mutual assistance clause has ever been invoked was on behalf of the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“If the United States was in trouble, and we called them, we said we got a problem … you think they’re going to come and protect us?” Trump told reporters in an Oval Office news conference in which he again suggested that the US would not come to the aid of a NATO member if it had not “paid” enough.

“They’re supposed to, but I’m not so sure,” he said.

In his remarks, Trump seemed neither to understand how Nato functions nor to know that the alliance has only come to the assistance of an attacked signatory once: to fight in Afghanistan alongside US troops against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Trump has, since his first term, characterised Nato as sort of a protection racket, in which members must pay the United States........

© HuffPost