Politics
Column: Trump wanted to pull the U.S. out of NATO. In a second term, he's more likely to try
Former President Trump hasn’t officially won the Republican presidential nomination yet. But he’s already throwing his weight around on foreign policy — and Republicans in Congress are falling in line.
At a campaign rally this month in South Carolina, Trump said he would encourage Russia to attack U.S. allies that don’t spend enough on defense.
“No, I would not protect you,” the former president said he told European leaders. “In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”
It was an extraordinary statement for a presidential candidate, and it drew rebukes from President Biden, who called it “shameful” and “un-American,” and European leaders. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said any suggestion that the United States would not defend allies was “dangerous” and “only in Russia’s interests.”
But most Republicans in Congress excused it as just another example of Trump being Trump.
“I have zero concern,” Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said. “He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician, and we’ve already been through this. You would think people would have figured it out by now.”
That wasn’t Trump’s only foreign policy intervention this month. He also lobbied GOP senators to block a bill containing $60 billion in aid to Ukraine and said any future aid should be limited to loans instead of grants.
Most Republicans rolled over for that one too. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, once a fierce supporter of Ukraine, said Trump’s opposition persuaded him to switch sides.
Trump’s positions weren’t entirely new, except for the innovation of encouraging Russia to attack U.S. allies. During his four years as president, he frequently charged that Germany and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization owed the United States billions of dollars for backstopping their defense, as if they owed nonexistent “unpaid dues” or the alliance were a protection racket. He eventually focused on the more reasonable complaint that some NATO members weren’t living up to the alliance’s defense spending targets — but he still told aides that he wanted to pull the United States out of NATO completely.
He repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin — and still does; earlier this month, he lauded the Russian president as “very smart, very sharp.” As of Sunday, Trump was silent about the death in an Arctic prison colony of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, except for a cryptic social media post suggesting that he has been persecuted by Biden just as Navalny was persecuted by Putin. And he has frequently expressed hostility toward Ukraine.
Here’s what’s different this time: In Trump’s first term, Republicans in Congress and his own foreign policy aides talked him out of acting on most of those impulses. If he wins a second term, those restraining forces will be mostly gone.
The former president has said he intends to fill a second Trump administration with MAGA loyalists instead of the establishment figures like Defense Secretary James N. Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who populated his first term.
“When I went there [to the White House], I didn’t know a lot of people; I had to rely on, in some cases, RINOs,” Trump said last year, referring to “Republicans in Name Only.” “But I know them all now. I know the good ones. I know the bad ones.”
Congress will be different too. Since Trump was elected in 2016, dozens of establishment Republicans in the House and Senate have retired or lost their seats to pro-Trump candidates. Others will leave at the end of their current terms.
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, a frequent Trump critic, is giving up his seat at the end of the year. Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, whom Trump has derided, says he plans to stay in the Senate, but he is likely to face a challenge for his leadership post.
Others, like Graham and Rubio, both of whom once criticized Trump, have trimmed their sails to avoid clashing with him. Last year, Rubio co-authored a law that prohibits a president from pulling the United States out of NATO without approval from Congress — but that won’t prevent Trump from undercutting the alliance by saying he won’t defend its members.
The cumulative result has been Trump unleashed, and a sea change in Republican foreign policy. For 60 years, from 1952 to 2012, the GOP was led by largely hawkish internationalists, from Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan and Romney.
Trump’s foreign policy instincts represent a different strain — xenophobic, suspicious of alliances, unilateralist on some issues and isolationist on others — that has taken root among Republican voters.
Last year, a survey sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs reported that most Republicans want the United States to “stay out of world affairs” instead of being actively involved. That was a striking reversal from earlier decades. As recently as 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency, 70% of Republicans said they favored an assertive U.S. foreign policy. By last year, that number had fallen to 47%.
In the same poll, only 40% of Republicans favored military aid for Ukraine, compared with 76% of Democrats. Unsurprisingly, opposition was strongest among the voters most attached to Trump.
Old-school internationalists in both parties warn that the consequences of a second, less-restrained Trump term would be dire.
“If Trump is reelected, adversaries will be emboldened, and allies will be frightened,” said Kori Schake of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who worked in the George W. Bush administration. “Allies are likely to make compromises with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea because they won’t trust us.”
“We spend hundreds of billions of dollars [on defense] to establish the credibility of our extended deterrence,” said Joseph S. Nye Jr., a former dean of Harvard Kennedy School who worked in the Clinton administration. “Trump creates doubts … that undercut those investments.”
Or take it from someone who worked at Trump’s side during the first term: his erstwhile national security advisor John Bolton.
“The damage he did in his first term was reparable,” Bolton said recently. “The damage in the second term would be irreparable.”
After Biden won the 2020 election, he tried to assure U.S. allies that the four-year Trump era was a temporary anomaly.
“America is back,” Biden proclaimed.
If Trump wins a second term, the message will be: No, it’s not.
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Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., a 30-year incumbent, lost to a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-backed challenger in a high-profile primary on Tuesday evening.
Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old socialist, defeated DeGette in a Democratic primary for a deep-blue House seat anchored in Denver, according to The Associated Press, scoring a major victory for the socialist left on Tuesday evening.
The DSA had been aiming to cast DeGette’s loss as evidence of its growing momentum after a slate of socialist candidates won Democratic primaries in New York City last week.
“Today, the East Coast, next week the Mountain West,” the DSA wrote in a social media post last week.
Rep. Diana DeGette speaks during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 10, 2024. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
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If elected in November, Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia, will likely join the ranks of the far-left group known as the Squad and become one of a handful of the House chamber’s outspoken socialists.
The millennial challenger was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the anti-incumbent leftist organization Justice Democrats. Controversial socialist streamer Hasan Piker, who has said Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel and praised the Chinese Communist Party, also backed Kiros’ insurgent primary run.
DeGette, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sought to win a 16th House term by flexing her leftist bona fides. She argued her seniority on an influential House committee would allow her to push for Medicare-for-All legislation — a longtime priority of the party’s far-left flank.
DeGette, who was endorsed by former CPC Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., also spotlighted her experience as an impeachment manager during Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021.
Though DeGette and Kiros shared few policy disagreements, they diverged sharply over Israel and antisemitism. Kiros also sharply criticized DeGette for accepting corporate PAC contributions.
Kiros, a PhD student and lawyer, was fired from a New York firm in 2023 after publishing an open letter, arguing that pro-Palestinian student protesters calling for the elimination of Israel were not antisemitic and appearing to defend Hamas.
Melat Kiros participated in a League of Women Voters Congressional District 1 candidate forum at Montview Presbyterian Church in Denver on May 28, 2026. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post)
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She has also described the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against the Jewish state as the “inevitable consequence of apartheid” and declined to characterize the deadly firebombing of protesters in Boulder last year who were urging the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza as antisemitic.
“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros told Colorado’s 9News in a recent television interview. “All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed.”
A June 2025 bipartisan resolution condemning the attack as part of a “rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals” won every present lawmaker’s support, except for Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who voted present.
Kiros has also suggested the United States deserved 9/11.
“Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response,” Kiros told 9News when asked if she thought the terror attack was “the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy.”
“And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to get rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place,” Kiros continued.
DeGette argued that Kiros’ embrace of Piker and her comments about antisemitism and 9/11 were disqualifying.
“I’m shocked and disgusted that Kiros is doubling down on excusing terrorism and the murder of innocent people,” the 30-year incumbent wrote on Facebook earlier this month.
Streamer and creator Hasan Piker speaks at a press conference during day two of Web Summit Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, Canada, on May 13, 2026. (Sam Barnes/Web Summit via Sportsfile via Getty Images)
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Colorado’s 1st Congressional District is the most liberal seat in the state and voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris by 56 points in 2024.
The primary fight was further scrambled by University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, also running for DeGette’s seat. Though James did not pose the same threat as Kiros, her vote share could ultimately have swayed the contest.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed off on a 100% state tax on money any Californians receive from Trump’s $1.8-billion “anti-weaponization” fund for his political allies.
Newsom unveiled his proposal in May, after Trump’s Justice Department said it would create a fund to compensate Trump’s allies who claim they have “suffered weaponization and lawfare” under Biden’s Justice Department.
The settlement fund was criticized by politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who described it as a “slush fund to pay people who assault cops.”
The fund remains in legal limbo. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Virginia extended a court-ordered block on the plan, which critics warned could be used to pay pardoned Jan. 6 rioters.
Fast-tracked into law as part of Senate Bill 122, Newsom’s plan imposes “a tax on any settlement fund payment from the federal Anti-Weaponization Fund, or any subsequent fund, settlement, or agreement, as provided, at a rate of 100%,” according to the bill text. The tax applies to all tax years between 2026 and 2030.
Newsom signed the bill Tuesday. In a statement, his office said the tax is meant to ensure that, should Trump’s fund proceed, California recipients won’t “receive favorable state treatment on those payments.”
“We believe democracy is worth defending, the rule of law matters, and public dollars should support victims—not those who attacked the very institutions that protect our freedoms,” Newsom said in the statement.
University of Southern California law professor Ariel Jurow Kleiman, an expert on tax law and policy, said that while Newsom’s tax is a “novel legal strategy,” she believes there is “no categorical legal restriction” preventing California from implementing it.
States have a “wide degree of discretion” to design their tax systems — including how they define income — so long as they do not violate their constitutions, Jurow Kleiman said.
If a California resident wanted to challenge the tax in court, they would need to show they were harmed by it to have standing to sue, according to Jurow Kleiman. That would mean receiving a payment from Trump’s settlement fund and then paying the 100% California tax. Unless the settlement fund is established and distributes payments, that scenario is unlikely.
While there have been proposals to levy a 100% tax on income above certain thresholds — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2023 said he supports a 100% tax on income exceeding $1 billion — Jurow Kleiman said she is not aware of any governments that have adopted such a policy.
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The House has officially shipped a colossal bipartisan housing package to President Donald Trump, and lawmakers are hoping that, at the very least, he doesn’t veto it.
Trump was supposed to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act last week, but his last-minute decision to ghost the signing ceremony with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., put into question whether the bill was dead.
His refusal to sign the bill, which passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support in both chambers, was to leverage the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which doesn’t currently have the votes to succeed in the Senate.
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Trump has refused to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. (Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump appears to be in no hurry to sign the bill, despite Republicans who are hungry for a win in the affordability fight ahead of the midterm elections.
“It’s so unimportant … compared to the SAVE America Act,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “I think the SAVE America Act is exactly what it says. It’s saving America from crooked elections.”
“Here’s what I would like to sign, much more than a bill that — big deal, it’s a yawn,” he continued. “Some people say it’s wonderful. To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
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It’s legislation that is loaded with nearly 60 provisions from both sides of the aisle in both chambers that’s designed to make it easier for homes to be built and for younger Americans to buy their first home. It also includes a ban on hedge funds buying up housing stock that Trump pushed Congress to include during the State of the Union earlier this year.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of the architects behind the bill in the upper chamber alongside Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., charged that Congress handed the bill to Trump “on a silver platter.”
“When you ask me what happens next, if he cared about the American people, he’d have already signed the damned thing, and we’d be underway,” Warren said on WCVB’s “On the Record” on Sunday.
But Trump doesn’t have to put his signature on the bill for it to become law.
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The Senate advanced a massive, Trump-backed housing package geared toward lowering the costs of homes and supercharging the housing supply. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., pitched it as legislation to prevent America from becoming a “nation of renters.” (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Protect Borrowers; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Constitution grants presidents the ability to veto a bill within 10 days of it being transferred over to the White House. In that scenario, Congress could override a veto of the housing package.
It’s happened before under the Trump administration. In early 2021, Congress overrode Trump’s veto of the annual National Defense Authorization Act — a massive Pentagon funding authorization package that some House Republicans are trying to use as a vehicle to pass the SAVE America Act.
But during that 10-day period, if Trump doesn’t sign the bill, it would automatically become law. That’s unless Congress completely adjourns, in which case a “pocket veto” could happen. The Senate is currently in recess and the House is scheduled to leave town by week’s end, but neither count as a full adjournment.
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Johnson, who spent the last few days meeting with Trump at the White House about the housing bill and the SAVE America Act, said: “I hope he does sign it.”
“If he doesn’t, it’s still law,” Johnson said. “We’ll still celebrate it, but he’s trying to make a point, and I think he’s making it very effectively. And the fact that you all ask me every three steps down the hallway illustrates that he has achieved the desired objective, and that is to make SAVE America the number one thing, because if we don’t get that right, everybody’s concerned about what happens next.”
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