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[Europe’s okay getting 70% of their power from Russia. NATO was designed to protect Europe from Russia. The US pays for most of it. Other than continuing to subsidize European countries who erect barriers to US products, what purpose does NATO serve?]

To protect Europe from Russia. But that doesn’t mean Europe won’t screw us over, the way the Japanese and the Koreans have done pretty much since the end of WWII. And we let them do so in order to help their war-devastated economies recover. Those economies are now recovered. So we need to renegotiate the terms of the alliance. We still need the alliance, because we don’t want a Russian empire that extends all the way to the Mediterranean. But it would be nice if the Europeans carried their weight on trade and defense.

A lot of Republicans and Democrats think we should always carry all of the weight, that we should play Santa Claus. Trump’s take is that we not only shouldn’t - we can’t afford to play Santa Claus. If our allies aren’t prepared to fight, we shouldn’t be part of that alliance.

You can’t get people off the dole without just ending it. It’s the only way that works.

It’s human nature, and yes, both the Japanese (although lately that has changed dramatically, and in Korea too) and the Europeans are hooked on junk.