Fresh from launching a war in Iran, President Donald Trump blasted close U.S. European allies on Tuesday in a rant from inside the Oval Office.
Trump, 79, was sitting down with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other senior officials when he took questions from the media.
The president had just been asked about NATO allies when he went on a tirade against Spain and the United Kingdom, despite the UK now allowing the U.S. to use its bases to launch strikes against Iran after an initial delay.
“Now, Spain actually said that we can’t use their bases, and that’s alright, we don’t—” Trump said, before mumbling incoherently at the end. “We could use their base. If we want, we could just fly in and use it.”
“Nobody’s going to tell us not to use it, but we don’t have to,” Trump declared. “But they were unfriendly.”
“Spain has absolutely nothing that we need other than great people. They have great people,” the president added. “But they don’t have great leadership.”
He said that he has told Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to cut off all trade with Spain and that the U.S. doesn’t want to have anything to do with the country after it has not agreed to contribute five percent GDP to NATO.
The president was about to let another reporter ask a question, but then he brought up the UK himself to criticize British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with,” Trump said.
The president has been upset with the British government for its deal to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, located in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius, and was angry that the UK did not initially allow the U.S. to use the Diego Garcia airbase to launch its Iran strikes.
At first, Starmer denied the U.S. use of any UK bases for the attack amid concerns over the legality of the strikes, but he indicated late Sunday that the UK position had changed as Iran launched its retaliatory strikes, including one that struck the UK base in Cyprus.
“By the way, I’m not happy with the UK either,” Trump cut off a reporter mid-question during his appearance on Tuesday to keep going after U.S. allies.
“The island that you read about, the lease, ok, for whatever reason, he made a lease of the island. Somebody came and took it away from him, and it’s taken three, four days for us to work out where we can land there,” Trump rambled. “It would have been much more convenient landing there as opposed to flying many extra hours, so we’re very surprised.”
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