Nikki Haley says Donald Trump makes Joe Biden look ‘sane and clear-headed’ after former president said he would not protect ‘delinquent’ NATO allies from Russia

Nikki Haley said it is “chilling” that Donald Trump is encouraging Russia to invade NATO ally countries he deems “delinquent.”

Speaking in the former UN ambassador. In Haley’s home state of South Carolina, Trump said on Saturday that if he were to become president again, he would not protect NATO allies from Russia if he believes they are not paying their fair share.

Haley told Politico Playbook that her presidential primary rival’s comments make Democratic President Joe Biden “look sane.”

“It’s the kind of comment that makes Joe Biden seem lucid,” she added, just days after Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Hur released a report detailing the president’s “impaired” mental abilities and memory. doubts were raised.

Haley says Trump’s comments also prove the 2024 frontrunner “lacks moral clarity.”

The ex-president made the alarming promise as he electrified a cheering crowd in Conway, South Carolina, on Saturday.

“The president of a great country stood up and said, ‘If we don’t pay and we are attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said you haven’t paid, are you overdue? He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’

“No, I wouldn’t protect you,” Trump said. “In fact, I would encourage them (Russia) to do whatever they want.”

‘You have to pay! You have to pay your bills.’

Trump and other Republicans have long lamented that in certain alliances — such as the United Nations and NATO — the U.S. pays the most of anyone on the world stage.

Haley is among those who have condemned Trump’s comments ordering NATO members to “pay up” or face threats from Russia.

“That should send a chill down everyone’s spine,” Haley said.

Among those condemning the former president was the White House, which labeled his comments “appalling and unhinged” and claimed they “promoted dangerous chaos.”

A former Trump communications official said the former president encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin as his country was already embroiled in war with Ukraine.

“President Biden has restored our alliances and made us stronger in the world because he knows that the first responsibility of every Commander in Chief is to keep the American people safe and true to the values ​​that unite us,” a statement from the White House.

“Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is heinous and unhinged – and endangers America’s national security, global stability, and our economy at home.

“Rather than calling for wars and promoting deranged chaos, President Biden will continue to strengthen America’s leadership and stand up for our national security interests – not against them.”

Trump’s former communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin wrote on Twitter that his declaration that he would not help NATO allies was music to Putin’s ears.

Griffin, who now co-hosts The View, also called Trump a “sad old man” for mocking his opponent Nikki Haley for her husband not being with her on the campaign trail because he is serving in the National Guard in Africa.

Haley blasted Trump for questioning the absence of her husband, Major Michael Haley, during the campaign abroad.

“Military families go through a lot,” Haley told Politico. “And the fact that Donald Trump has never been near a military uniform, never had that experience, never known what it’s like, shows why he keeps calling them suckers and losers.”

She also wondered why other Republicans haven’t spoken out against Trump’s comment condemning her husband.

‘Why is there silence in the Republican Party?’ she asked. “Like, where is everyone?”

“Where are the Republicans in defense of our men and women in uniform who sacrifice for us and protect our country?”

DailyMail.com previously revealed claims that Haley cheated on her husband with two other men in 2008, with Trump seemingly vaguely referring to the scandal in his comments.

However, prominent figures including lawmakers, retired military officers, journalists and members of Congress expressed disgust at Trump’s comments about NATO and Russia over the weekend.

But Richard Grenell, Trump’s ambassador to Germany and acting director of National Intelligence in the final months of the Trump administration, backed his old boss.

According to the alliance, NATO members are not ‘obligated’ to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense – it is a guideline that the group wanted to work towards in 2014, before Trump was president.

At the South Carolina meeting, Trump also repeated his frequent and dubious claim that as president he had pushed heavily armed European allies to pay more for defense.

‘NATO was arrested until I joined. I said: ‘everyone is going to pay’. They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘absolutely not’. “They couldn’t believe the answer,” he said.

Another former ambassador, Michael McFaul, who served as Barack Obama’s man in Russia in 2012-2014, pointed out that Trump did not understand how NATO worked.

‘This is crazy. And 8 years later, Trump shows that he STILL doesn’t understand how NATO works! It’s not a protection racket. They don’t pay us to protect them,” he wrote on Twitter.

Trump often claims that he single-handedly convinced NATO members to contribute more, but there is no record of this ever happening.

As McFaul explained, NATO funding also isn’t working the way Trump often claims it is, and his boasts don’t match reality.

No NATO member fails to pay its share of the alliance’s $3 billion common budget, which is based on GDP and of which the US pays 16 percent.

Trump made the same claim during a town hall in New Hampshire last month, arguing that NATO was “taking advantage” of the US.

‘The European countries have benefited from… I want to use the word that starts with an S, but I don’t want to do it because I see some young, very good-looking children in the audience, and I assume they are watching on television ‘, he said.

“But they took advantage of us in terms of trade, and then they took advantage of us in terms of our military protection.

‘Of the 28 countries at the time, only eight countries had collapsed. We paid the difference.

“And I went to them. I said, ‘If you don’t pay, we’re not going to protect you.’ And they said, ‘Are you serious?’ I said, ‘I mean that.’ And the next day, billions of dollars flowed into NATO.”

Trump threatened to withdraw from NATO several times while president, calling NATO “outdated” and a drain on U.S. resources.

This is despite the fact that the approximately $500 million the US pays in direct financing is dwarfed by the $842 billion defense budget.

Congress became so concerned that Trump could unilaterally withdraw from NATO if he won a second term that it passed a law in December requiring the president to obtain a two-thirds majority of the Senate to do so.