{"id":7314,"date":"2026-07-08T16:28:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T16:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/7314\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T16:28:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T16:28:15","slug":"sen-dick-durbin-says-trump-wisely-pushed-nato-allies-to-spend-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/7314\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Dick Durbin says Trump wisely pushed NATO allies to spend more"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump arrives in Turkey for high-stakes NATO summit<\/a> <\/p>\n

President Donald Trump arrives in Ankara, Turkey, for a high-stakes NATO Summit. Key discussions involve the F-35 fighter jet program, Turkey’s S-400 Russian defense system acquisition and increased defense spending from NATO allies. Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson reports the latest and Dr. Rebecca Grant weighs in.<\/p>\n

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!\n <\/p>\n

A top Democratic senator admitted on CBS News that he believes President Donald Trump<\/a> “wisely” made the critical demand to NATO allies to spend more on defense.<\/p>\n

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who is in Turkey this week as part of a bipartisan congressional delegation to NATO, spoke with CBS News<\/a> when an anchor laughingly asked him about Trump\u2019s “strange relationship with NATO over his push for them to spend more on security.” The anchor asked Durbin, “Where does this relationship go from here?”<\/p>\n

In response, Durbin described Trump\u2019s relationship with NATO as a “back-and-forth, love-and-hate relationship.” He went on to say that “the president has, I think, wisely asked for our NATO allies, there are 32 members of NATO, to spend more of their own money to protect themselves.”<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s not an unreasonable ask,” he added.<\/p>\n

TRUMP ENTERS FINAL NATO SUMMIT DAY AS UKRAINE, DEFENSE SPENDING TAKE CENTER STAGE<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Donald <\/p>\n

Sen. Dick Durbin (right), D-Ill., said that President Donald Trump (left) “wisely” asked NATO allies to increase their defense spending. (SAUL LOEB \/ AFP via Getty Images; Graeme Sloan\/Bloomberg via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Durbin, who has served in the Senate for nearly 30 years, is the minority whip and ranking member of the influential Judiciary Committee. He is in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, as part of a congressional delegation led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., to the 2026 NATO Summit. Trump is also attending the summit, accompanied by Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a>, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.<\/p>\n

Durbin did not spend all his time praising the president. Speaking from Ankara, he went on to say that “there have been things that happened during his second presidency which raised the question of our commitment to the future of NATO.”<\/p>\n

“I believe in it; that\u2019s why I\u2019m here. And I\u2019ve found that of the delegates that are here from all over the region, part of NATO, that they believe, as I do, that we\u2019re a safer world with the NATO alliance. We have been since 1945.”<\/p>\n

TRUMP BETS ON FORMER NATO TROUBLEMAKER AS TURKEY’S STRATEGIC VALUE SURGES<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Trump <\/p>\n

President Donald Trump stands next to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as NATO leaders gather for a family photo at a NATO leaders’ summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. (Stoyan Nenov\/Reuters)<\/p>\n

He added that the summit “will be an opportunity for us to convince the president, if we have to, to move forward with this relationship.”<\/p>\n

Before traveling to Turkey for the summit, Trump vented his frustration about NATO<\/a>, writing in a social media post that “the United States spends more money on NATO than any other country, by far, to protect them, without getting any benefit from so doing: U.S. 999 Billion Dollars, United Kingdom, 90.5 Billion Dollars, France, 66.5 Billion Dollars, Italy, 48.8 Billion Dollars, Poland, 44.3 Billion Dollars. Others, including Germany, are MUCH LOWER. (2014-2025) Ridiculous!”<\/p>\n

A NATO release<\/a> stated that the “cut-off date for information used in this report was 3 June 2025” and that “figures for 2024 and 2025 are estimates.” It listed estimated 2025 U.S. defense spending at $980 billion, the United Kingdom’s at $90.508 billion, France’s at $66.531 billion, Italy’s at $48.8 billion and Poland’s at $44.314 billion.<\/p>\n

TRUMP CALLS OUT NATO AHEAD OF SUMMIT, CALLING IT ‘RIDICULOUS’ FOR US TO PERSIST ON ‘ONE SIDED PATH’<\/a><\/p>\n

\"NATO <\/p>\n

NATO emblem is seen, while the NATO Summit is held in the city, in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 12, 2023 (Jakub Porzycki\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP<\/a><\/p>\n

In another post, Trump said it is “ridiculous for the U.S.A. to continue along this one sided path when the relationship is not reciprocal. They were not there for us!!!”<\/p>\n

The president’s comments came after NATO leaders backed a new defense spending benchmark calling on allies to invest 5% of gross domestic product in defense and defense-related expenditures.<\/p>\n

Fox News Digital’s Alex Nitzberg\u00a0and Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

Peter Pinedo is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump arrives in Turkey for high-stakes NATO summit President Donald Trump arrives in Ankara, Turkey, for a high-stakes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4315,57,248,7,50,11],"class_list":["post-7314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-democratic-party","tag-donald-trump","tag-foreign-policy","tag-nato","tag-politics","tag-spending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}