Leave aside the bluster, and the NATO summit went off without any real damage.
The Guardian reports:
Donald Trump predicted he would have “an interesting time” at this week’s Nato summit. European leaders worried that the US president would go on the offensive against America’s traditional allies. In the end, nobody could say they were surprised.
Breakfast had not even been served in Brussels on Wednesday morning when Trump launched into a bitter tirade against an old ally, declaring that Germany was “totally controlled by Russia”. At a pre-summit breakfast meeting with the Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, Trump accused Berlin of “being a captive of the Russians” because of its dependence on energy supplies.
Without waiting for the clicking press cameras to leave the room, he declared that “numerous of the countries” were going out and “making a pipeline deal with Russia where they are paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia”. A two-minute clip posted on his Twitter feed broadcast the repetitive two-minute-plus tirade to his 53.4m followers.
But he didn't announce any US troop withdrawals nor did he decline to participate in military exercises. Apart from spraying around gratuitous insults, he did nothing of any consequence.
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