CNN’s Fareed Zakaria On Trump’s False NATO Claims: ‘It’s Bullshit, It’s Bravado, It’s Braggadocio’
CNN host Fareeed Zakaria has a history of calling the president a “bullshit artist” on live TV. Thursday night, Zakaria was ack with the blue language.
At the end of his two-day NATO summit in Brussels, President Donald Trump triumphantly declared that he had gotten the other countries in the alliance to not only meet their agreed-upon defense spending commitments but was able to convince them to commit to even more.
“Everyone’s agreed to substantially up their commitment,” he said. “They’re going to up it at levels they’ve never thought of before. I can tell you now that NATO now is really a fine-tuned machine. People are paying money that they’ve never paid before. They’re happy to do it. And the United States is being treated much more fairly.”
Of course, much like Trump’s claims that he had ended North Korea’s nuclear threat with his Singapore summit and vague agreement, the president’s words didn’t match up with the reality of the situation. Immediately after Trump made his comments, French President Emmanuel Macron noted that the NATO members merely reiterated their commitment to reach two percent defense spending by 2024.
During a CNN panel discussion on Trump’s NATO visit and his false claims, Zakaria let anchor Anderson Cooper and Washington Post columnist Max Boot know that this was all part of Trump’s act to portray himself as a master wheeler and dealer.
“It’s the art of the New York hustle being applied to international relations,” Zakaria stated. “It’s bullshit, it’s bravado, it’s braggadocio. Manufacture facts, claim the other side is weak, claim that you won, claim that the deal you have is the best deal in the history of the world.”
He continued, “It’s bizarre only because it’s being applied by the President of the United States in the most important form the United States has created over the last 70 years for its security, NATO. This is sort of the way, i suppose, this kind of New York real estate deal happens. You can tear your hair out about this because this has been going on ever since Trump has been president.”
Boot joked that the reason he is currently bald is that he’s been tearing his hair out about all of this.
Watch the clip above, via CNN.
