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June 26, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
17:12
The Forgotten NATO Summit

With wars still blazing in Ukraine and a war perhaps on hold for now in the Israel/Iran war, it was easy to overlook the "Daddy's Home" NATO summit this week. The European obsequiousness toward President Trump was embarrassing, but the biggest news was a "pledge" to increase NATO member state defense spending to five percent of GDP.

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Time Text
NATO Summit Sycophancy 00:03:02
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Dr. Paul is not with us today, but he will be back in the studio tomorrow.
So, I'm going to introduce my friend and colleague, Chris Rossini, to join me today.
Chris, how are you?
Great to be with you again, Daniel.
Yeah, let's break down this NATO summit.
I almost missed it.
I was too busy watching the bombs flying back and forth between Israel and Iran.
It was like Wimbledon.
And I don't mean to cast light on war because war is hell, but it was a hell of a lot more exciting in many ways than the NATO summit.
And so, we're going to try to break it down.
We're not going to cover the whole thing, but I think we can probably break it down into three main areas of importance: sycophancy, Ukraine, and 5%.
And on the sycophancy front, let me just read a note that NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta, we call him Tutte Rutte Rutte, he sent to Donald Trump before the event.
He sent him a note, a text saying, Mr. President, dear Donald, Europe is going to pay in a big way as they should, and it will be your win.
Where do you start with that, Chris?
I mean, listen, everybody understands Donald Trump.
He likes praise so much that he praises himself constantly.
So that's what he wants.
That's what he's going to get, you know, even from people that are looking to rip us off even more.
So it's a shame, but that's Donald Trump, period.
And everybody does it.
You know, they know his personality.
So, you know, it's so sycophancy is what we're going to get.
And there's also the crazy scene where he's sitting there with Ruta.
Excuse my cough.
And he's explaining the Israel-Iran war to Ruta saying, again, using the story of two kids in a schoolyard.
You got to let them find it out.
And then Ruta said, yeah.
And then Daddy has to come referring to Trump and use strong language to break it up.
That's perfect for Trump.
And in fact, Trump's video team, in case anyone hasn't seen it, they actually put together a video of Trump exiting Air Force One with a song called Daddy's Home playing as a sort of a video of it.
And it would be comical if it wasn't just so weird, Chris.
No, I know.
And there's been a lot of weird stuff going on.
I mean, he's writing essays each day now, one on Massey, AOC, and yesterday on Netanyahu.
I mean, and everybody's scratching their heads, trying to read this because it's as if Biden or Kamala wrote it.
And it's weird stuff.
And I don't know.
A lot of this is noise.
Russia's Military Spending Surge 00:13:35
We have to focus on the important parts.
And you're going to mention the 5% of GDP, I'm sure.
Yeah, I just wanted to mention first what has disappeared from the NATO agenda this year for the first time since 22 is Ukraine as a potential member, appearing in the final statement, and even Zelensky himself as a major participant.
Even though Zelensky almost put on a suit, it was a suit of sorts.
He washed out his gym clothes and actually put almost a suit on, which was kind of a sign of desperation.
But when he got there, he had been excluded.
He had been excluded from all of the working groups.
So there was just really nothing except the photo op left for Zelensky.
I think he made some comments, and I think he met briefly with President Trump.
And this is apparently on the part of the other NATO members To appease President Trump to not bring this up because he just didn't want to deal with it.
And so Zelensky was there as window dressing.
He was asked, President Trump was asked in a press conference if he's going to send more missiles to Ukraine.
And he said, well, you know, I don't know, maybe we'll send a couple over there, but we've got to send some to Israel.
We need some too.
And, you know, and on and on.
So I think that really is an important feature.
And I'm going to get into a little bit more about that later, about why it's important, the fact that Ukraine has disappeared.
But the big news out of it is this pledge to increase military spending to 5% of GDP by 2035.
Now, Chris, you're the econ guy here.
Let's crunch those numbers.
What does that mean?
Well, number one, the winner is the military industrial complex.
You know, perhaps the only winner.
5% of GDP by 2035, which is 10 years from now, which, you know, they could change it.
Countries could ignore it.
They ignore it now.
You know, it's 2% now.
But it's not binding.
It's, you know, countries cannot do it and make the Americans pay.
And what's going to happen?
Trump's going to call, oh, don't, you better spend more.
You know, like, okay, thanks, Donald.
Hey, you, you pay for it.
So the incentive is not to hit these numbers.
So many of them, like I said, don't hit the 2% now.
And, you know, from their perspective, it's smart.
Keep your money and let the dumb Americans pay for your defense.
You know, this whole thing shouldn't exist anyway.
There's no threat.
But, you know, so this 5% of GDP in 2035 may sound good now, make good headlines.
2035 is a long time from now, and a lot can happen between now.
NATO might not even be around in 2035.
So that's, you know, that's how I think of it.
Well, that Estonian economic powerhouse, they're close to their 5%.
So they may absolutely make it.
They'll tip the scales in favor.
And but I think the polls are at about 4% because they have convinced themselves that Russia wants Poland, which trust me, they don't.
That's the last thing they would want.
But that is the interesting thing about it.
For the U.S. now, if the U.S. keeps up with this pledge, because we spend about 3.5%.
Now, that's a very general figure because there are many ways of measuring how much we spend on military.
But just take it, for example, say we have a $1 trillion military budget this year, and that's 3.5%.
If we're going, if we do fulfill that pledge by 2035, that would raise our military budget to $1.45 trillion, which is an enormous chunk.
Although, by then, we may not have that high of a GDP.
So it may actually be a lot less.
But as a percentage of our GDP, that's massive, Chris.
And that to me just sounds like it's going to go on the credit card, right?
No, that's what I mean.
The military industrial complex is the winner here.
And if these European nations truly thought that they were in danger, that they would fund their own stuff.
They would be scared.
We better spend more on defense.
We're in danger.
They know they're not in danger.
Russia is not the Soviet Union.
In fact, if anybody is the Soviet Union, it's the United States and NATO.
We're the ones that expanded from Germany all the way down to Russia's border in Ukraine.
Russia hasn't done that, you know, so we became the Soviets.
But so they know that there's no danger because Russia has no ideology of conquering and turning everybody into the new Soviet man.
We have this ideology of conquering and turning everybody into the wokeman.
So, you know, if they truly thought they were in danger, they would spend the money without hesitation.
You know, I normally would agree with you 100%, Chris, but I'm starting to wonder because that's the behavior of the Europeans these past couple of years has been to consciously destroy their economies, particularly Germany, to destroy their economies, to say, no, we don't want cheap gas from Russia, and to just completely undermine the prosperity of chasing this shimmer, chasing this Russia, this Rivanchis Russia that doesn't exist.
So while I would definitely take your point, I wouldn't be surprised to see this, because of the suicidal tendencies of the Europeans, I wouldn't be just surprised to see them try to do this, to see them try to ramp it up.
And that's when you're going to have more social unrest because the Europeans, because they haven't spent as much money, which wisely haven't spent as much money on the military as we have, they have instilled a, you know, kind of a socialist system, for lack of a better term, which we don't necessarily agree with.
But you do have a lot of social services that are provided by the state that Germans, for example, Brits, the French have gotten used to.
And so if they, for example, tell the Germans that, you know, sorry, guys, we got to spend more on tanks.
So you're going to lose all these goodies that you've been working for.
I do think you're going to see two things happening.
One is going to be social unrest.
Actually, three things happening.
Social unrest, the rise of parties that are considered, quote, extremists, like the OFTI in Germany, the National Reson Blanc in France, and others.
And then you're going to see a crackdown on people.
And you've already seen that in places like Germany, a political crackdown on, quote, extremism.
So if they do shoot themselves in the foot and try to get to this point, they are ensuring, and in fact, they're increasing, accelerating their economic decline and social decline.
Yeah.
And, you know, the same would apply to us.
We were expecting with President Trump that he would make America great again.
And to do that, you need to take off the shackles of government on the American people.
And that is not happening.
They're being increased, increased spending, debts, deficits.
And if you're spending more on military, you're spending more on destruction.
It's not productive.
It's not like Elon Musk, who's doing all these things, and obviously he's not the only one, that are productive for our society.
Creating more bombs and missiles is destruction.
It goes up in the air.
And these DC people just keep getting rich off of it.
So we're not improving our lives with more military spending.
It's the exact opposite.
We are wasting resources instead of making America great again.
So even if the number is, oh, look at how much we're spending and look at this and look at all these bombs that are, yeah, they're bombs that are being made.
Big deal.
That's not what we want in this country.
That's not what made America great in the first place.
Freedom and entrepreneurship and satisfying desires of people and all the problems that we have here is what made America great.
But that has all been tossed aside, you know, for militarism.
Exactly.
And the reason we have to make all those bombs is because we have all those bases in places like the Middle East where they don't want us.
So we create the problem and we try to solve the problem.
It's something, the thing is, they're desperate.
NATO is desperate to look for enemies because that justifies its existence.
And so you had Mark Rutte talking about the fact that he has an envoy to Africa that's expanding NATO's presence in Africa, maybe not physical military presence, but attempts to have more political influence in the area, to which most normal people would say, well, why are you doing that?
This is not what you're for.
You were to defend against the Soviets.
And the fact that they don't have threats, they happen to create some.
And this is sort of a strange situation now, because on the one hand, we have the don't mention Ukraine situation where the NATO partners just didn't make it a part of the agenda this year to please Trump.
But on the other side, they are desperate to have this.
They need the war in Ukraine to continue.
And that's kind of the sick part, Chris, because if that war stopped tomorrow, how on earth could they justify this massive increase in spending?
They're still using the same mantra.
The Russians are expansionists.
They are going to come and take us over.
They're using that to justify it, even at the same time.
Well, Trump doesn't want to hear that.
He doesn't want to talk about Russia.
He doesn't want to get involved in Ukraine.
He's, frankly, it sounds like he's sick of it.
So it's a strange kind of situation now where they're desperate to have the war continue.
Of course, the Ukrainians who are seeing their population dwindle down to nothing practically, they can't be that happy about having to fight and die to fulfill Europe's ambitions to enrich the military-industrial complex and do more money laundering, which is what military spending really is.
Yeah, it's very sad.
And it's a sad part of the human condition that bigger, stronger nations will use smaller nations as pawns, as even sacrificial lambs.
You know, you mentioned Poland.
Poland was a perfect example in World War II.
They were sacrificed by the British and the French.
They're like, we're going to defend you.
We're going to be, and then they didn't lift a finger.
And Poland was smashed by both the Nazis and the Soviets.
Well, Ukraine is in the position now where they're, you know, they got smashed for an agenda that, you know, is of these outsiders and they don't care.
And Americans don't care.
Look on X.
The value for human life has dropped to nothing.
So, oh, well, you know, same thing for Gazans and everybody else.
They're, you know, they're not people.
They're just something that you look on the screen and see and be like, oh, well, let me go watch TV.
So that's what Ukraine has become.
For people with some sanity, with human compassion, with a heart, this is terrible to look at.
You know, that Ukraine was basically a sacrificial pawn, and that's it.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's going to shrink.
It's going to continue shrinking unless they do something.
Well, let's make this a quick show today, Chris.
I don't know how you feel, but let's just kind of make it a NATO update.
Not much happened, but the three things that did happen, I think, are important.
And I think we covered them.
So if you want to say some closing words, then I'll close out the show.
Yeah, just one final thought because not everybody knows the history.
NATO should have been gone 30 years ago, at least when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, because there was the Warsaw Pact on one side and NATO on the other.
The Warsaw Pact dissolved with the Soviet Union.
NATO should have dissolved too, but they did not, you know, because once you start something like this, they did not want to quit.
So why Russia?
Why this constant moving towards Russia all the way to Ukraine?
What is over there?
Russia has been wanting to be conquered for at least 500 years by Europeans, the British 500 years ago.
And it's because they have resources, galore, endless resources, and globalists want it.
They want to control it.
Whereas Russia, they want to be their own nation, own culture, own traditions, Orthodox Christianity.
They want to be Russia.
Globalists don't want that.
They want to do what they did to us here.
We lost all of those things.
We lost our nation, our culture, our tradition.
Religion was tossed aside.
They want to do that to Russia too.
You know, so that's the war.
That's what NATO wants.
And Russia is defending against it.
So they should have been gone.
That's why when you hear NATO's a dinosaur, NATO's a dinosaur, it is a dinosaur, but it's a tool being used to accomplish this 500-year-old dream.
Thanking Viewers, Promoting Conference 00:00:34
Yeah, absolutely, Chris.
Well, I'm going to close by thanking all our viewers for tuning in today for a quick update on the NATO summit that you may have missed.
You blanked you missed it.
So I'll do well.
I think we've done a little bit of that.
And I want to thank everyone for watching.
And I do want to encourage everyone to please go get your tickets and join the Ron Paul Institute for its annual conference in Dulles, Virginia, near the Dulles Airport.
Get those tickets now.
If you don't find in the description, go to ronpaulinstitute.org and you'll find them.
Thanks to everyone for tuning in.
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