Trump Demands NATO Allies Spend More in Defense
VAUSE: The former Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, who has now been charged with corruption, accused of embezzling millions of dollars from a state investment fund which he created. Investigators allege some of the money was spent on expensive jewelry for his wife. Najib pleaded not guilty to the charges. The allegations against him apparently played a major role when he was voted out of office in May after leaving Malaysia for nearly a decade. Thousands have taken to the streets of Warsaw and other Polish cities on Tuesday shouting shame and free court. They're protesting government changes that will remake the judiciary. One of the most controversial will force a third of Supreme Court judges to retire unless they're granted an extension. The E.U. strongly opposes the overhaul which has been imposed by Poland's ruling party. More protests are expected on Wednesday. The former president says he will take part. British police are investigating what they call a major incident involving a couple who may have been exposed to an unknown substance. We're just learning that it happened Saturday in the English town of Amesbury, not from Salisbury. That's where Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned with a suspected nerve agent back in March. The couple in this incident are in critical condition. Just days before he heads to a NATO summit in Brussels, President Trump is pushing NATO allies to meet their defense spending promises. He sent very critical and harsh letters to Germany, Canada, Norway, as well as other NATO members laying out his demands. And he is warning if they don't, the U.S. may shift its military presence in Europe. More now from CNN Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Trump sending scathing letters to America's closest allies, demanding they increase military spending to at least 2 percent of their economy, the NATO standard. Trump has been relentless that U.S. allies are not pulling their weight at</s>NATO. DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: If all NATO members had spent just 2 percent of their GDP on defense last year, we would have had another $119 billion.</s>STARR: Mr. Trump's letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel had an especially frosty warning. It will, however, become increasingly difficult to justify to American citizens why some countries do not share NATO's collective security burden while American soldiers continue to sacrifice their lives overseas or come home gravely wounded. A senior German official points out that in Afghanistan, Germany is the second largest contributor of foreign troops. To Norway, a not so subtle reminder of Norway's risk since it remains the only NATO ally sharing a border with Russia that doesn't have a plan to meet the NATO spending target. NATO spending may be one area where there is agreement with former President Obama.</s>BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Everybody's got to step up and everybody's got to do better.</s>STARR: NATO's spending estimate shows the U.S. is well above the 2 percent spending standard at more than 3.5 percent of the U.S. economy going to defense. The U.K. is just over 2 percent while Norway, Canada, and Germany are all under. But Trump could go too far in criticizing NATO at the upcoming summit just before he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin.</s>COLONEL CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: If he wants to scuttle the western alliance, there's a supposition that he does want to do that, then of course that could very well play into the hands of the Russians.</s>STARR: The president also making additional national security claims, tweeting, "just out that the Obama administration granted citizenship during the terrible Iran deal negotiation to 2,500 Iranians, including to government officials." It's a claim by an Iranian cleric that a former Obama national security official is pushing back on, saying the allegation is false and based on a Fox News report. Mr. Trump also tweeting on what he sees as success with North Korea, "If not for me, we would now be at war with North Korea." Even though the Pentagon says there is no evidence Kim Jong-un is giving up his weapons.</s>STARR: President Trump, of course, expected in Brussels next week at the heads of state summit of NATO, where relations with the allies and Vladimir Putin are expected to be front and center. Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.</s>VAUSE: For more on this, political analyst and president of the Global Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University, Michael Genovese, joins us now. Michael, thanks for coming in</s>MICHAEL GENOVESE, POLITICAL ANALYST: Thank you.</s>VAUSE: OK. So, ahead of this NATO summit, the U.S. allies is still pushing in their own -- "Bloomberg" is reporting the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, told reporters in Rome that his country is contributing, but the forms of contribution aren't measured just in economic terms. Italy's home to U.S. naval, Air Force, and intelligence bases, and the country is involved in military missions in Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Kosovo, Somalia, and the Baltic states. There are ways to measure the value of NATO way beyond this sort of agreed to but not sort of compulsory 2 percent of GDP on defense spending figure, right?</s>GENOVESE: There are. That's why the crisis of NATO and of our alliance is basically caused by the U.S. I will say that the president has aired a beef that's legitimate. Europe does underspend. There's no question about that. It would be great to have them spend more. We should pressure them to do more. But having said that, how do you do that? Do you do that by sending nasty letters? Do you do that by publicly berating your friends and allies while you're praising your enemies? I think the president has it, as they say, bass ack wards.</s>VAUSE: You know, Greece is one of the countries that meets the 2 percent, but only because its GDP has collapsed over the last 10 year, and the amount it's spending on its military has fallen dramatically. But because of this economic turmoil, it's met the threshold. So that's one area where this just seems to be kind of a bizarre, arbitrary number that doesn't actually hold much water.</s>GENOVESE: You can find your markers, and sometimes your conclusion precedes finding the markers. Here's what I want to find and that's what we look for and I think that's President Trump. Why he is so critical of the alliance which has been so valuable to the United States. So important in protecting our interests, not just our homeland interests, but our interests around the world. So, I think he's choosing to find things to criticize our friends and allies for while finding excuses for Russia.</s>JONES: You know, in that Bloomberg article, an anonymous source is quoted as saying the president remains committed to the alliance. Putting to one side just the sheer bizarreness of actually having an anonymous source quote something like that, which, you know, in the previous administrations would just be something presidents say regardless, is it possible President Trump could actually pull the U.S. out of NATO? Could he make good on those threats?</s>GENOVESE: Well, you know, a comment announcing that we support NATO is like announcing that you support Christmas.</s>VAUSE: You know, motherhood or ice cream.</s>GENOVESE: It's easy to say that. I would have said a year ago, the answer would be no to your question. Today, it looks like an open question. There is ample reason to be suspicious that the Trump/America first approach is America alone and that somehow picking fights with our friends helps us in the long run. I don't see how that's true. I don't see how that's possible. In effect, what I think he's doing is undermining our security by taking the great strength that we have, strength in numbers, strength in unity, and collapsing that. And who wants that more than anyone else? Vladimir Putin.</s>VAUSE: With that in mind, is there anything else left on Putin's honey-do list for Donald Trump if you look at what's been happening over the last year and a half, this tension with NATO and possibly breaking up the alliance kind of the latest things?</s>GENOVESE: He wants a free hand in messing with elections not just in the United States but in the west. He wants to have a free hand in expanding his territorial --</s>VAUSE: And Trump's given it a pass on the election meddling.</s>GENOVESE: Right. There are two people I think left in the United States, who believe that the Russians didn't meddle. They're Nunes and Trump.</s>VAUSE: Right. So, I don't think Nunes believes it.</s>GENOVESE: Well, I don't know. I'm not going to give him that much credit to be honest with you. But that's kind of delusional. The question is, you know, how connected to reality are they about Russia and about NATO? It's quite alarming. Our allies are alarmed. I know when I speak to European leaders, I always say, be patient. He'll be there for just a few years. This is not who we are.</s>VAUSE: Yes. The big question comes if he gets a second term, what does that say about the United States? President Trump is speaking in West Virginia a few hours ago. To your point, he touched on the U.S. increased spending on defense.</s>PRESIDENT TRUMP: A record $700 billion for our military, and next year, $716 billion, most amount ever. We're rebuilding our military and when have we needed it more outside of wars themselves? When? Think about it.</s>VAUSE: OK, so the question, what does he mean by think about, what do you make of that? It's a little cryptic to me.</s>GENOVESE: It was kind of a throwaway line he often uses like we have to do it. We have no choice. It's one of the lines he ends a thought with because the thought itself seems a bit vacuous. We spent that money because we want to. We choose to. It's in our interest to do. So, it's not someone is holding a gun to our head and saying you have to pay this. We do that because we think it protects our interests. So, we have a self-interest in doing that, and a very important one and a good one. I think it's justified. But the point is picking fights is why you need more and more troops because you might have those fights break out into open conflicts.</s>VAUSE: What if one of the NATO allies turns to Donald Trump and says, no, we're not increasing our budgets?</s>GENOVESE: It would be difficult to do that because we are so linked. While you have the big power flicking everyone in the head, those people who are at the receiving end of Donald Trump's diatribes, they need to be mature. They need to be responsible, and they need to say, look, in the long- term interests, we're going to have to put up with this guy who's doing these things that are against the interests of the west. But we have to be the ones who take some --</s>VAUSE: The grown-ups in the room. On another note, the U.S. will be celebrating the July 4th independence holiday in the coming hours on Wednesday, and the president had a message for his supporters in West Virginia.</s>PRESIDENT TRUMP: Let us pledge to expand the blessings of liberty, prosperity, and justice to all of our citizens, and let us always remember that we are one people and one nation saluting one great American flag.</s>VAUSE: But he also compared securing the border being like a war. He also -- he talked falsely about towns being liberated from the control of these foreign gangs. With that in mind, another Republican group is paying to have a message broadcast on the Fox News Channel, the conservative Fox News Channel, on July 4th. This is it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Through this golden door has come millions of men and women. These families came here to work. Others came to America, in often harrowing conditions. They didn't ask what this country could do for them, but what they could do to make this refuge the greatest home of freedom in history. They brought with them courage and the values of family, work, and freedom. Let us pledge to each other that we can make America great again.</s>VAUSE: Is that Ronald Reagan Republican Party gone forever?</s>GENOVESE: Well, the party of Lincoln is gone. The party of Reagan is gone. This is clearly the party of Trump. And while there was a lot of resistance at first, I think a lot of Republicans have now said and a big part of that is the courts, that he's our guy. He's going to get our agenda passed. And the words that you had him reflected, really a wonderful sentiment. But he chooses not to be president of one nation, not to be president of a United States. He plays to his base, and he condemns his political opponents and adversaries. So, he is much more divisive than I think any president in modern times.</s>VAUSE: It was another time with Presidents Reagan and Bush and Clinton, Obama, Bush W. Michael, good to see you. Next hour, we will talk about the Supreme Court and what that means to the Republican Party. So, come back. Thank you. And we'll take a short break. When we come back on NEWSROOM L.A., a new legal battle over affirmative action and university admissions. The Obama administration drawing back policies that tries to make colleges more diverse.