President Trump’s head-spinning appearance at the NATO Summit in Ankara on Wednesday began with him insulting vast swaths of Europe during the morning sessions and finished just hours later with him declaring that the whole thing had been one big kumbaya session.
“I just want to say there was tremendous love in that room,” he said at a news conference not long after he had said repeatedly that “I’m not happy with NATO.”
Describing his meetings behind closed doors, he boasted: “They said, ‘Sir, we love you.’ These are grown people saying that. Isn’t that nice?”
“Maybe they’re trying to get to me, and in a way, they did,” he said. “Because there was tremendous unity in that room.”
There did, in fact, appear to be some progress to come out of the summit.
NATO pledged $80 billion in military aid to Ukraine this year and next, though that represented a mix of both previous and new commitments. And Mr. Trump told President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that the United States would allow the country to manufacture Patriot air defense systems to protect itself from Russian missiles.
Despite saying last month that he would bring a gift that would make Mr. Erdogan “very happy,” the president said he still had a decision to make about whether to allow Turkey to purchase F-35 fighter jets. He said he had an “inclination” to do so because Turkey did not help Iran during the war with the United States and Israel, and because of what he has described as his deep friendship with its leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Hundreds of journalists from around the world pushed, elbowed and yelled at one another to make it into a soaring auditorium here in Ankara for the chance to ask a question of a freewheeling American president who might say anything.
“That’s a lot of press, wow,” Mr. Trump said, sounding amused, as he took to the lectern. His secretaries of state, defense and treasury stood stone-faced behind him as he pin-balled his way through all sorts of topics over the next 40 minutes.
The war with Iran flared up again while Mr. Trump was in Ankara, just 1,000 miles from Tehran, and the fighting dominated the news conference.
The president said that the cease-fire with Iran was likely over after the United States carried out airstrikes on Tuesday against several Iranian targets. The Pentagon said they were in response to Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. On Wednesday, Iran’s armed forces said they had attacked U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait.
Early in the day at the summit, Mr. Trump unleashed verbally on Iran, referring to the country as “scum” and its leaders as “sick people.”
He was particularly incensed by what he characterized as the Iranians’ dishonest, tricksy negotiating style. “There’s something wrong with them,” he fumed. “We said, ‘Go and do your funeral stuff,’ and instead of that, they start shooting rockets at ships.”
By “funeral stuff” he meant the nationwide funeral procession attended by millions of people for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader killed in the war Mr. Trump launched alongside Israel in February.
“They’re cuckoo,” Mr. Trump said, tapping an index finger against his cranium.
The NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, sat impassively by his side, legs crossed and hands clasped over one knee.
A major motif of this year’s summit involved European leaders deciding whether it was politically advantageous to at last dispense with the niceties and fight back against Mr. Trump, as the leaders of Spain and Italy have started to do. The time when all European heads of state tried to play nice with the mercurial American president is decidedly over.
Early in the day, Mr. Trump made more menacing comments about taking over Greenland, and repeatedly criticized Germany, Italy, Britain and France for not helping the United States in its war with Iran.
Spain in particular came in for a drubbing from Mr. Trump on Wednesday morning. “I don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he said.
His spat with the Spaniards started when they refused Mr. Trump’s demand that European nations to raise their military spending, then kicked into a higher gear after Spain denied the use of its military bases to U.S. forces attacking Iran.
“Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits,” Mr. Trump said.
He did not say what he meant by visits, and he did not acknowledge that the 27-nation European Union, which includes Spain, negotiates trade jointly.
Mr. Trump went on to call the Spanish “hopeless, bad people” and reiterated several more times that the United States would no longer trade with the country of 50 million people.
The president struck a sharply different tone at the evening news conference closing out the gathering. “This was a tremendously successful summit,” he said, thanking Mr. Rutte “for doing a fantastic job.”
“Spain has been very bad,” he added, “but you know, Italy has been good, and almost all of the countries have been good. They just had a bad moment.”
Mr. Rutte himself said the summit had solidified “a stronger, a fairer, and a more capable NATO.” And he tried to soft-pedal the American president’s attacks on allies.
“It not only makes us stronger in the end, we also come together,” Mr. Rutte said. “Today is evidence of that, and I always know that President Trump and the U.S. has completely committed to NATO.”
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