Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that former President Donald Trump would seek to pull the United States out of its NATO alliance if he wins the 2024 presidential election.
Clinton, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran against Trump during his first presidential bid in 2016, said that a Trump reelection would spell disaster for the 31-member military alliance. Clinton made the remarks during a Saturday luncheon at the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of world leaders in Germany.
“He will do everything he can to become an absolute authoritarian leader if given the opportunity to do so,” she said, according to NBC News. “And he will pull us out of NATO even though the Congress passed a resolution saying that he couldn’t without congressional support, because he will just not fund our obligations.”
Clinton spoke of a “long struggle” ahead of the November election and said that voters should take what Trump says “literally and seriously.”
“He means what he says,” the former first lady said. “People did not take him literally and seriously in 2016. Now he is telling us what he intends to do, and people who try to wish it away, brush it away, are living in an alternative reality.”
Clinton, who served from 2009 to 2013 as former President Barack Obama’s first secretary of state, made the remarks in the wake of Trump telling attendees of a political rally that as president he warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” if they were delinquent on their financial commitments to the alliance.
“You don’t pay your bills; you get no protection. It’s very simple,” Trump said during a rally in South Carolina.
The remarks spurred backlash, including from members of his own party.
Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley slammed Trump for the comments during a Sunday appearance on ABC’s This Week. Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations for nearly two years, called Trump’s remarks about NATO “bone-chilling” and accused the former president of siding with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“Right now, Putin is feeling more emboldened than he ever has,” Haley said.
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Vice President Kamala Harris, who represented the U.S. at this year’s Munich Security Conference, delivered a speech to the summit on Friday where she repudiated Trump without specifically mentioning him by name.
“Let me be clear, that worldview is dangerous, destabilizing, and indeed shortsighted,” Harris told attendees of the conference. “That view would weaken America and undermine global stability and undermine global prosperity. President Biden and I, therefore, reject that view.”
