WATCH: NATO Chief Praises Trump, Smacks Down NYT Reporter’s Biased Questions

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte refused to take the bait when New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked him a number of slanted, anti-Trump questions in a new interview.

Rutte, who has been supportive of President Trump since he was appointed in 2024, sat down with the outlet to discuss the alliance’s recent summit, increased defense spending goals and the war in Ukraine. During the summit. NATO nations announced that they would be increasing their respective defense spending to five percent of each member’s GDP at the behest of the U.S. president.

Trump had long described increased spending as a top foreign policy goal, as the United States has long footed the majority of the alliance’s bills and commits the most to defense spending by a wide margin. Rutte has long expressed support for increased spending, though Garcia-Navarro repeatedly tried to get him to attack Trump throughout the interview.

“He sees it as European nations basically funding their welfare states, you know, giving free health care, giving pensions at the expense of American defense. You think that view is fair?” the NYT reporter asked.

“The second half of the view is fair, but the first half I would not buy into because I think that and I’m pretty much confident of the fact that the American president, Trump, very much realizes his whole team, based on my conversations when I was in Washington in March, when I was in April, when I had the conversations last week in The Hague, that for the US to stay strong and safe, there is this embeddedness (sic) with European security and of course, working together to keep the inner Pacific safe,” the secretary general replied.

He went on to reiterate his support for Trump’s position by pointing to the alliance’s history and the vital role the U.S. plays in NATO. “But I do agree with the second half, because there is this enormous irritance (sic) since Eisenhower with American presidents and I think they’re completely right that Europeans were not paying enough and that’s where you are paying an average 3.5 percent of your GDP on defense that Europeans were well struggling to get to 2 percent,” he said.

“So there he has a big point. And luckily, last week in The Hague, we solved that,” he added.

Garcia-Navarro then followed up with another biased question, in which she insinuated that Rutte was “groveling” before Trump at the NATO summit. “ I saw someone refer to NATO now as the North Atlantic Trump Organization. It’s been a week of a-lot of criticism,” the NYT reporter claimed by pointing to a few cherry-picked headlines. 

“Well, let’s face what is happening. There were seven or eight countries in Europe, not at two percent. This was the four, so now it it’s 5 percent a new benchmark. Do we really think that this would have been we would have been able last week in the Hague to agree to that 5% if Trump would not have been reelected as President of the United States?” Rutte shot back.

“ So I think when somebody deserves praise, that praise should be given and President Trump deserves all the praise because without his leadership, without him being reelected President of the United States, the 2 percent this year and the 5 percent in 2035, we would never, ever, ever have been able to achieve agreement on this.”