President Donald Trump observes a military demonstration at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on Tuesday, June 10, 2025, during a visit to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
President Donald Trump last week lashed out against a NATO ally, and according to a new piece from MS NOW, his latest military "tantrum" is worse than many might realize and is something that they should be paying attention to.
The situation started last week when German Chancellor Friedrich Merz offered up some "candid assessments" about Trump's spiraling conflict with Iran, arguing that the U.S. was getting "humiliated" by Iran's leaders and had "absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever." Trump, predictably, "responded quickly in decidedly Trumpian ways" after the chancellor "hurt his feelings," lashing out against Germany as a "broken country" in a social media post and ordering 5,000 troops to be removed from the country over the next year.
In a Monday piece for MS NOW, longtime contributor and Rachel Maddow producer Steve Benen highlighted the many concerning details about this move from Trump, including reports that officials at the Pentagon were "stunned" and blindsided by the move." Benen further noted that Trump explicitly told the press that he is not ruling out similar withdrawals from Spain and Italy over critical comments from their leaders.
He also cited an op-ed from the New York Times, in which Linas Kojala, the chief executive of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center in Lithuania, warned that Trump's rash move in Germany "risks weakening one of America’s best strategic investments: a military presence that deters Russia and keeps Europe’s old rivalries from becoming America’s problem again."
Benen wrote that this move feels "oddly familiar" from Trump, given that Trump announced "even more dramatic cuts to U.S. troop deployments in Germany" six years ago after being snubbed by then-chancellor Angela Merkel, much to the delight of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the surprise of his own Pentagon officials. Those plans were halted then, but now, Trump has the runway to do serious damage.
"The Republican president did not, however, immediately follow through on his own announced decision. And by the time the administration took steps to implement Trump’s plan, he lost his 2020 re-election bid, and Joe Biden wasted little time in scrapping his predecessor’s plan," Benen explained.
He concluded: "History is repeating itself — except this time, Trump has plenty of time remaining in his term to actually execute the vision that he and Putin prefer."
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