Watch: Joe Scarborough rips Trump for 'encouraging' Putin to 'take over NATO countries'
Critics of 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump have been lambasting him in response to comments he made about Russian President Vladimir Putin and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during a Saturday, February 10 campaign event. Trump told the crowd he would "encourage" Putin to invade NATO countries if they don't "pay" enough to be a part of the alliance.
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman, had a scathing response during a Monday, February 12 broadcast of "Morning Joe." And he brought on Adm. James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO, to make his point.
Scarborough told a panel that included Stavridis, "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire and Never Trump conservatives Charlie Sykes and Elise Jordan, "He's praising (Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor) Orbán. He says, 'We need a strongman'; he's telling us that. He says he's going to be a dictator on Day 1; he's telling us that. Here, he's telling us he's going to encourage Vladimir Putin — a former Russian Soviet enemy — to take over…. not only Ukraine, but…. NATO countries."
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Following Scarborough's comments, Stavridis told the "Morning Joe" panel, "Terribly dangerous, and lives will be lost — particularly if he goes the next step and does something, or attempts to do something, truly foolish, ignorant. And that would be to pull out of NATO. I mean, let's just do the numbers for one second."
The former NATO supreme allied commander continued, "NATO is 32 countries. It's 55 percent of the world's GDP. It's 3 million troops — active duty, well-trained, competent, almost all volunteers. It's got a collective defense budget of a trillion dollars…. It's the second largest defense budget in the world."
READ MORE: Nikki Haley reveals she had 'conversation' with Trump about his 'bromance' with Putin
Watch the video below or at this link.
The dangers of Trump's bromance with Putinwww.youtube.com
