Haley calls Trump’s NATO comments ‘bone-chilling’ and empowering to Putin

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley called former President Donald Trump’s recent NATO comments “bone-chilling” and empowering to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“When you hear Donald Trump say in South Carolina a week ago that he would encourage Putin to invade our allies if they weren’t pulling their weight, that’s bone-chilling because all he did in that one moment was empower Putin,” Haley said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Trump said on February 10 that he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country that doesn’t meet spending guidelines on defense in a stunning admission he would not abide by the collective-defense clause at the heart of the alliance if reelected.

“NATO was busted until I came along,” Trump said at a rally in Conway, South Carolina, Haley’s home state. “I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna 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.”

Haley’s comments followed the death of Russian opposition leader and outspoken Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny while in prison on Friday.

The cause of his reported death remained unclear, but the news drew a forceful reaction from Western leaders, including President Joe Biden, who pinned the blame on Putin, saying that “what has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality.”

Trump has declined to address Navalny’s death directly. When asked by CNN on Friday whether he had a response to Navalny’s death, the Trump campaign pointed to a post on Truth Social from the former president that did not mention Navalny or Putin and instead bashed Biden and asserted “America is no longer respected.”

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