NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg refused to disclose what the leaders of NATO member states think about President Joe Biden’s health decline when asked about the matter over the weekend.
CBS News reporter Robert Costa asked Stoltenberg about the matter during a Sunday interview on the network’s “Face The Nation” program following Biden’s disastrous debate performance a week and a half ago.
“What’s your real take on the private assessment of the president of the United States among NATO leaders?” Costa asked.
“I’m absolutely confident that, when all NATO leaders convene here this week, it will be a great summit,” Stoltenberg said. “We will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the most successful alliance in history. And I just met President Biden in the Oval Office a couple of weeks ago, and that was a good and productive meeting, where we prepared all the important decisions we’ll make here on defense, on support for Ukraine, and ultimately on burden-sharing, that European allies are now really stepping up and spending record amount of money on defense, and, of course, also on China and our need to work together.”
He said that it would not be possible to have a strong NATO without “strong U.S. leadership.”
When pressed again about what he thinks is really going on and what NATO leaders believe about Biden’s health, Stoltenberg responded: “If I started to comment on issues like that, then, suddenly, NATO, I will be part of domestic debate.”
“I think it’s important for NATO to stay out of that kind of domestic discussion. They’re, of course, important in the United States, but NATO should not be part of it,” he said. :What matters for NATO is the decisions what you do together. And just, for instance, on – on defense spending, which has been a big issue for the United States for many years under different presidents, when we made the pledge 10 years ago to increase defense spending, only three allies spent 2 percent of GDP on defense. This year, it’s 23, allies an increase just this year 18 percent across Europe and Canada also, record high investments for our European allies.”
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[[{“value”:”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg refused to disclose what the leaders of NATO member states think about President Joe Biden’s health decline when asked about the matter over the weekend.
CBS News reporter Robert Costa asked Stoltenberg about the matter during a Sunday interview on the network’s “Face The Nation” program following Biden’s disastrous debate performance a week and a half ago.
“What’s your real take on the private assessment of the president of the United States among NATO leaders?” Costa asked.
“I’m absolutely confident that, when all NATO leaders convene here this week, it will be a great summit,” Stoltenberg said. “We will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the most successful alliance in history. And I just met President Biden in the Oval Office a couple of weeks ago, and that was a good and productive meeting, where we prepared all the important decisions we’ll make here on defense, on support for Ukraine, and ultimately on burden-sharing, that European allies are now really stepping up and spending record amount of money on defense, and, of course, also on China and our need to work together.”
He said that it would not be possible to have a strong NATO without “strong U.S. leadership.”
When pressed again about what he thinks is really going on and what NATO leaders believe about Biden’s health, Stoltenberg responded: “If I started to comment on issues like that, then, suddenly, NATO, I will be part of domestic debate.”
“I think it’s important for NATO to stay out of that kind of domestic discussion. They’re, of course, important in the United States, but NATO should not be part of it,” he said. :What matters for NATO is the decisions what you do together. And just, for instance, on – on defense spending, which has been a big issue for the United States for many years under different presidents, when we made the pledge 10 years ago to increase defense spending, only three allies spent 2 percent of GDP on defense. This year, it’s 23, allies an increase just this year 18 percent across Europe and Canada also, record high investments for our European allies.”
WATCH:
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