Trump received Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the White House after recently describing the long-standing alliance as a failure and suggesting that the US may have to leave it.
Afterwards, Donald Trump posted on the Truth platform in all capital letters and with exclamation points:
"NATO wasn't there when we needed them, and they won't be there if we need them again," he wrote, and brought up another sore point in the alliance:
"Remember Greenland, that big, poorly managed block of ice."
Have they followed through on their commitments?
The US president's interest in Greenland previously caused a major crisis within NATO when he had not ruled out military intervention against Denmark to seize the island. Mark Rutte previously played a major role in calming tensions.
Donald Trump is now criticizing the country's allies for, he says, not having contributed enough to the war the United States and Israel have launched against Iran.
'It was a very straightforward, a very open discussion,' Mark Rutte told CNN after the meeting, in an interview where he did not give a straight answer to the question of whether Donald Trump announced an American withdrawal from NATO.
“Obviously disappointed”
Rutte said in a CNN television interview that "some" member states have not done what they committed to do in connection with the Iran war, but that a large majority have "done what they promised in a case like this."
'He (Trump) is clearly disappointed with many NATO allies, and I can understand what he is saying.'
It is not clear which countries the disappointment is directed at.
According to government sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, the US president is considering punishing individual NATO countries that he believes have not been helpful enough. This could include moving US forces stationed abroad to countries considered more accommodating.
