President Donald Trump on Tuesday lashed out at NATO members as he threatened to pull American troops from Europe over the high levels of non-white immigration to European countries.
The president was nearing the tail-end of a marathon press conference alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he was asked about negotiations over whether the Danish territory Greenland could be “given” to the United States — something Greenlandic and Danish authorities have rejected.
He told reporters that the Greenland row, which nearly blew up last year’s NATO summit, had “hurt my relationship with NATO” and claimed Denmark “doesn’t help Greenland.”
“Denmark doesn't spend money to really help Greenland, but it's an important part for the United States, and it's surrounded by China ships and Russian ships, and that's not going to happen. The ships is not going to happen. It was Greenland that, in my -- and it continues to be that should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark. And when they wouldn't go along with it, and with all the money we spend to help them with Russia, and we don't have to spend any money,” he said.
The president then suggested American troops could be yanked from bases across Europe “because, as you probably noticed, Europe's a very different place than it was 20 years ago.”
“[It’s] a lot different, much different, much different, and they better be careful with immigration and energy. If they're not careful with those two things, you're not going to have a Europe anymore,” he said.
The president’s comments echoed racist statements from many of his allies who have lamented changes in the complexion of European countries’ populations in the modern era, as well as his oft-repeated complaints about purported restrictions on oil drilling in the British North Sea.
The stunning exchange with reporters came just moments after he’d essentially hijacked the meeting in Erdogan’s office, turning it into a freewheeling question-and-answer session with press and even going so far as to not permit Erdogan to respond to a question about sanctions imposed on Ankara under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act after Turkey’s purchase of a Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile system.
The penalties in question have been in place since 2020 and include a ban on all U.S. export licenses to Turkey's Presidency of Defense Industries, freezing of some Turkish assets and visa restrictions. The U.S. also suspended Turkey’s participation in the F-35 fighter jet program, though Trump also said he was considering reinstating Ankara despite statutory prohibitions against doing so.
Before the Turkish leader could respond to the query, Trump interjected to say that the U.S. would be lifting the sanctions.
“I can tell you, we're going to be taking the sanctions off, ok? I don't want him to waste his time answering that question, because we're working very closely with Marco Rubio ... and with Scott Bessent and with Pete [Hegseth] and everybody else, we're going to be taking the sanctions off. It's time to do that,” he said.
“We don't want to sanction friends. It's very simple. There's plenty of people we can sanction ... we don't want to sanction friends.”
The contentious exchange came not long after he’d arrived in Turkey for this year’s North American Treaty Organization leaders summit as tensions between the United States and the rest of the 32-member defensive alliance remain at an all-time high.
Trump was greeted by Erdogan as he disembarked from the former Qatari luxury jet he is using as Air Force One in Ankara and shortly after the two leaders participated in an arrival ceremony at the Turkish presidential residence.
As Trump and Erdogan reviewed troops, a military band played the John Phillip Sousa march “Stars and Stripes Forever” while Turkish fighter jets performed a flyover while trailing red, white and blue smoke.
Erdogan, whose authoritarian tendencies have led some of Trump’s critics to compare him to the longtime Turkish leader, welcomed Trump to Turkey and called him his “valuable friend” at a bilateral meeting shortly after the arrival ceremony.
For his part, Trump praised Erdogan as his “great friend” and said he has “a lot of respect” for Erdogan while lauding the “special relationship” between the two leaders.
“I just want to say that I have a lot of respect for the President, and I think it's really to the benefit of both countries ... it's an honor to be with you, and we're going to have a lot of good meetings, we're going to have good dinners, good food, we're going to have a good time, but mostly we're going to have a lot of work, and we're going to do good things for our countries,” he said.
Trump later suggested that he would not have chosen to attend the annual gathering had it not been in Turkey this year and said he was “very disappointed” in NATO for not participating in the war he started against Iran even though NATO is a defensive alliance and had no role in the conflict.
“Frankly, if it weren't held in Turkey, where my friend happens to be a very strong leader, a very strong person, it's possible that I wouldn't have attended. I felt I had to attend because of the fact that you know I know he's gone all out. It was a big thing to have NATO come to Turkey or anyplace else. It's a big thing, but we weren't treated well because we did something in Iran,” he said.
He then launched into a stem-winding rant about various NATO allies’ reaction to the war, first claiming he did not want help from any of them while complaining about the “trillions of dollars” the U.S. has “invested” in the alliance “to protect European countries” from Russia.
“I say that's fine, but you would think that they'd be very willing to do something to help us, and they really weren't,” he said.
“We didn't need any help at all, and in a way I was testing people, I was testing to see whether or not they'd be there, because I've long said that we helped them, but I'm not sure that they'd be there for us. And Italy turned us down, and Germany turned us down, and France turned us down, and it's okay, but you know, why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars, and they're not there for us, we've always been there for them?”
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