(Reuters) – The United States will never help Europe if it came under attack and will leave NATO, which is dead, Donald Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020 while he was still president, according to a European Commissioner.
“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you,” Thierry Breton quoted Trump as saying during a meeting he also attended at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2020.
“By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO,” Trump also said, according to the European Union official. “And by the way, you owe me $400 billion, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defense.”
Trump is the frontrunner to be the Republican nominee in the 2024 election, with opinion polls predicting a tight contest against Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s election. Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Andrew Gray, Charlotte Van Campenhout and Costas Pitas; additional reporting by Tim Reid; editing by Don Durfee and Jonathan Oatis)
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