Lawmakers and military families denounced President Donald Trump’s shocking remarks denigrating NATO troops who were wounded and died fighting for the United States in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Speaking to Fox Business on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on Thursday, Trump asked if NATO “will be there if we ever need them.”
“We never needed them,” he told Maria Bartiromo. “We never asked anything from them. You know, they say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, and they did—they stayed a little behind, a little off the front lines. But we were very good with Europe and with many other countries.”
His message sparked outrage in the United Kingdom, which has sent more than 150,000 troops to Afghanistan in the years since the 2001 US-led invasion.
The British contingent, which, after the United States, was the second largest of the campaign, lost 457 soldiers, while thousands more were wounded.
“They were absolutely at the forefront,” Lucy Aldridge, whose son William died in Afghanistan when he was 18, told The Mirror. “And to ignore that because, let’s face it, Trump isn’t particularly hot on history… He’s so out of touch with reality, and what human life is worth. He has no compassion for anyone who doesn’t serve him.”
Diane Dernie, whose son Ben Parkinson suffered horrific injuries in Afghanistan in 2006, said Trump’s latest comments were “the ultimate insult.”
The response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 was the only time that NATO invoked the collective defense requirement of Article 5 of the alliance. / Sara K. Schwittek/Reuters
Starmer’s official spokesman pointed out that the response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 was the only time that NATO invoked Article 5, the principle of collective defense of the alliance that treats an attack on one member as an attack on all, The Telegraph reported.
“Their sacrifice and that of other NATO allies was made in the service of collective security and in response to an attack on our ally,” Starmer’s spokesman said of the soldiers who were wounded and killed. “The president was wrong to downplay the role of NATO troops.”
Starmer later called Trump’s comments about NATO troops “insulting and frankly appalling.”
“I will never forget their courage, their bravery and the sacrifice they made for their country,” he said. “I consider President Trump’s remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling and I am not surprised that they have caused this hurt to the loved ones of those who were killed or injured and, in fact, across the country.”
Starmer said Trump should apologize for the comments.
Even the Conservative Party blasted Trump’s remarks, with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch calling them “absolutely appalling” and “dishonourable”, according to The Telegraph.
Conservative member of Parliament Ben Obese-Jecty, who served in Afghanistan as a captain in the Royal Yorkshire Regiment, said it was “sad to see the sacrifice of our nation, and that of our NATO partners, held so cheaply by the president of the United States,” according to ABC.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that Trump was
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
The president’s dismissal of NATO troops was reminiscent of his earlier comments about Americans who died in combat being “mice” and “losers.”
During a trip to France in 2018, the president said that American soldiers who died on French soil during WWI were “losers,” and that the US Marines who helped stop the 1918 German advance on Paris were “suckers” for dying at the hands of the enemy.
The White House denied reports of the comments, which were revealed by The Atlantic magazine in 2020, but they are just one example of the president disparaging military veterans and their families.
In December, he struggled to garner much sympathy for the families of Americans—many of them US military veterans—who died fighting in Ukraine.
He mocked the war wounds of the late Sen. John McCain, publicly insulted the parents of a 27-year-old soldier who died in a car bomb in Iraq, and privately raged over funeral expenses for a female soldier who was killed by a male soldier at Fort Hood.