President Donald Trump recently wrapped up a summit of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member nations, during which he heavily criticized the allied nations for engaging in massive energy deals with their main purported rival, Russia.
Trump particularly focused a critical eye on a natural gas pipeline project that would span from Russia to Germany. His words, of course, drew fire from the anti-Trump media, even though that same pipeline project had drawn heavy criticism from senior members of the previous administration, like Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Trump calls out NATO
Trump called out Germany for their involvement with Russia in a pipeline project known as Nord Stream 2, which bypasses Eastern European nations by running beneath the Baltic Sea to deliver significant amounts of natural gas to Germany.
The new pipeline will run alongside a pre-existing pipeline and is considered politically destabilizing and rather hypocritical for the region, especially as billions of dollars are spent to ostensibly defend Europe from Russia while Europe spends billions purchasing energy from Russia.
Trump noted that Russia would use the energy deals and pipeline to “totally control” Germany and called the project inappropriate and “a very bad thing for NATO.”
Of course, the anti-Trump media pounced on his criticism of a NATO ally — but what Trump said was really no different, albeit a bit blunter, than what had been said about the pipeline deal just a few years ago by former Obama administration officials like Biden and Kerry.
Biden, Kerry stand with Trump?
Biden had made it clear in 2016 that “no country” — namely Russia — should be in the position of using energy production and supply as an economic weapon or tool of coercion against other nations in their region, which is exactly what Russia has been doing to various European nations with regard to their abundant supply of natural gas and oil.
“Speaking for ourselves, speaking for the United States, Nord Stream 2 pipeline, we think, is a fundamentally bad deal for Europe,” Biden said in August 2016. “From our perspective, it looks like a fairly bad deal.”
He added: “Europe needs diverse sources of gas, not, in our view, a new Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and to lock in greater reliance on Russia at this moment … I know will fundamentally destabilize Ukraine.”
In May 2016, Kerry said that the pipeline project caused him “deep concern,” and further noted: “This project has provoked a very heated debate on both sides of the Atlantic, and we are convinced would absolutely have an adverse impact on Ukraine, on Slovakia, and Eastern Europe. And we cannot lose sight of that.”
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What Trump said was really no different from what Biden, Kerry, and many others said just a few short years ago — though perhaps with less diplomatic niceties.
Trump was right to call out our allies for cozying up to Russian energy just as Biden, Kerry, and others were correct to do so a few years back — and it’d be nice if the liberal media would take a moment to recall how they praised Biden and Kerry for their tough love of our allies while slamming Trump for the same thing.
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