President Donald Trump is poised to use his meeting with new NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte to implore NATO members to “pay their fair share.”
Rutte, who replaced longtime secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg last October after Stoltenberg’s term was extended amid the Russia-Ukraine war, is expected at the White House on Thursday as Trump and his allies, including Elon Musk, ramped up their criticism of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
“I’m quite confident, as he always does when it comes to NATO, he will urge the NATO secretary the president’s belief that NATO countries need to pay their fair share for their own defense,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “We have been spending billions and billions of dollars on NATO, which the president agrees with so long as other countries are paying their fair…