Foreign Pool Report #3- NATO Secretary General Rutte's comments during the bilat

Here are NATO Secretary General's comments in the Oval Office with President Trump:

"Thank you so much, Mr. President, again for hosting me, but also for taking time in Florida a couple of weeks after you were reelected.

And of course, our phone call a couple of weeks ago. And I must say, Trump-45, you basically originated the fact in our spending, you take the aggregate, 700 billion more of in defense than when you came in office in 2016-17.

That was Trump-45, but then you may look at Trump-47, what happened the last couple of weeks is really staggering. The Europeans committing to a package of 800 billion defense spending. The Germans now are potentially up to half a trillion in defense spending. And of course, you have Keir Starmer here, the British Prime Minister, and others, all committing to much higher defense spending.

They're not there. We need to do more. But I think they want to work together with you in the run-up to the next Summit, to make sure that we have a NATO, which is really invigorated under your leadership, and we are getting there.

We also discuss defense production, because we need to produce more weaponery. We're not doing enough, not in the US, not in Europe, and we are lacking behind when you compare to the Russians and the Chinese.

And you have a huge defense industrial base. Europeans buy four times more here than the other way around which is good, because you have a strong defense industry, but we need to do more there to make that we (inaudible) the production and kill the redtape.

So I would love to work with you on that. And finally, Ukraine, you broke the deadlock. As you said, all the killing, the young people dying, cities getting destroyed, the fact that you did that, you started the dialogue with the Russians and successful talks in Saudi Arabia now with Ukrainians. I really want to comment you for this.

The Hague is my hometown; I’d love to host you there in the summer and work together to make sure that there will be a splash, a real success projecting American power on the world stage."

(After a question on Greenland...)

"What you did& when it comes to Greenland, yes or no, joining the US, I will leave this outside of the discussion for me, I don’t want to drag NATO on that. But, when it comes to the high North and the Arctic, you’re totally right. The Chinese are now using these routes. We know that the Russians are already arming. We know that we have a lack of icebreakers. So, the fact that the seven Arctic countries, outside of Russia, working together on this under US leadership is very important, to make sure that that region, which is important to the world, remains safe. And we know things are changing there and we have to be there."

Richard Latendresse

Correspondant � la Maison-Blanche / Animateur de "Contextes"

White House Correspondent / Host of "Contextes"