Trump suggests he wants US to pull out of NATO in new interview

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Apr 1, 2026

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President Donald Trump says he hopes to pull the United States out of NATO as the rift in the trans-Atlantic alliance gets wider over his war with Iran.

Long a skeptic of the Western alliance, Trump said in an interview published Wednesday that he is well along the way to trying to pull the U.S. out of the North American Treaty Organization that unites the U.S., Canada and Western Europe.

“I would say (it’s) beyond reconsideration,” Trump told the Telegraph newspaper. “I was never swayed by NATO.”

Trump said the alliance’s reluctance to take part in the Iran war has deepened his antipathy to NATO, and quoted Russian leader Vladimir Putin to back his stance. “I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” he said.

Congressional approval would be needed for the U.S. to leave NATO, making it unlikely Trump could get his way anytime soon.

The president doubled down on attacking NATO in a separate interview with Reuters Wednesday, adding that he planned to slam the military alliance during his prime-time address to the nation Wednesday night.

“They haven’t been friends when we needed them,” Trump told Reuters. “We’ve never asked them for much … it’s a one-way street.”

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a joint statement that the U.S. should stay in NATO.

“NATO is the most successful military alliance in history” and stressed that the Senate “will continue to support the alliance for the peace and protection it provides” the United States, Europe and the world.

Trump has feuded with European leaders for years over issues like their push for firmer support of Ukraine and his apparently abandoned push to take over Greenland.

He’s also urged the allies to assume greater responsibility for their own security and spend more on defense. He has argued that the U.S. has done more for them than the other way around.

The long-simmering tensions within the alliance have bubbled up again over the war in Iran.

As energy prices have spiked, Trump has been desperate to get countries to send their ships to the Strait of Hormuz. He has called NATO allies “cowards.”

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