Biden Endorses Mark Rutte to Lead NATO
Joe Biden is trying to get his man in place at NATO to help his foreign agenda.
It was reported on Wednesday that Trump endorsed Mark Rutte to be the next Secretary General of NATO.
Rutte is currently the Dutch Prime Minister.
Biden Pulling the Strings
Rutte is in competition with several other candidates, so Biden’s endorsement could swing the pendulum significantly in Rutte’s favor.
After initially expressing interest in the job, Rutte has been rather quiet on that front as of late, saying that he learned his lesson about making his desires known publicly.
Rutte stated, “I made the mistake in October talking about, ‘I might be interested in that role’ and then that mushrooms.
“I shouldn’t have done that, so I decided not to talk about that anymore.”
In order for Rutte to win, he will have to have a unanimous vote, and obviously, the vote of the United States will be looked at as the standard.
Trump has already put NATO on notice that if he takes office again, the United States could pull out if every nation is not paying its fair share.
The current rule is members are supposed to pay 2% of the GDP defense spending, but last year, only seven countries hit that mark.
This year, that number is expected to rise, but countries are stretched thin due to all the support that Ukraine has required in its war against Russia.
That is going to be Rutte’s biggest challenge because many of the nations supporting Ukraine did not have a big surplus of weapons, and everyone needs to restock their own supplies, including the United States.
On that issue, Rutte stated, “Let’s stop moaning and nagging and whining about Trump.
“We need to invest in our defense expenditure. We need to massively ramp up arms production and then we need to massively do more in support to Ukraine.”
Most expect the position to be settled before the big July conference, so we should see this play out fairly soon, which will tell us all just how much global influence Joe Biden has during this disastrous presidency.
