Officials from NATO countries are enjoying an extra perk of this year’s summit in Washington: easier access to members of Donald Trump’s inner circle.
They have fanned out around town to meet with Trump confidants and get a sense of the Republican’s thinking. They’ve sat for breakfasts and dinners with Richard Grenell, who is often talked about as a potential secretary of State pick. And they’ve held meetings with former top national security advisers including retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg or John Bolton, about European security.
“Everyone keeps asking us if we’re meeting with Trump people,” said an exhausted senior European diplomat, one of seven European, NATO and former U.S. officials who were granted anonymity to speak candidly about a potential new administration. “The answer is ‘Of course we are.’ We all are. We’ve been doing it for years. But the proximity this week is helpful.”
A former Trump official who is informally engaged with the campaign said that while he has been meeting with Europeans about the businessman’s worldview for years, “it’s been more intensive over the last four weeks. There’s immense interest in what his thinking on NATO might be.”
So far, Trump has said he might let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that don’t spend enough on their defense and claimed, without providing a plan, that he could end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine within weeks of his reelection. But there are still lots of questions about what policies he would actually enact in office.
The most high-profile meeting will come Thursday when Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister and a very public Trump backer travels to Mar-a-Lago in South Florida after the NATO summit wraps to chat with the former president.
Other foreign emissaries both allied to Trump and fearful of his administration are likely to descend on the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week. D.C.-based ambassadors are invited to both party conventions, but many European representatives have already booked their flights and hotel rooms in Wisconsin.
While foreign governments have always kept in touch with potential administrations in waiting, the sense of duty is paired with a sense of panic this year. In many NATO countries, there is a genuine concerns about what a second Trump term might mean for the alliance’s unity and Ukraine’s defense. Having conversations early and often helps with European countries’ planning and preparations for what’s to come.
Asked for comment, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt reiterated a talking point his team has been using for weeks: “When President Trump returns to the Oval Office, he will restore peace and rebuild American strength and deterrence on the world stage.”
Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser, said he’s been holding many conversations with NATO allies and partners this week, though he declined to name names. While he is no longer in Trump’s inner circle after saying he’s unfit for office, Bolton tells whoever will listen that Trump is likely to withdraw the U.S. from the alliance as president, a move he nearly saw Trump make during a NATO meeting in 2018. The reaction from allies, he said, is disbelief. “But even if I’m providing the doom and gloom, they should believe it.”
But those who are seen as still having Trump’s ear, like Grenell, are the main attraction for NATO allies. He had dinner Sunday evening with Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski and breakfast Monday with senior Turkish officials at the Waldorf — site of the former Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.
In some cases, foreign officials say the meetings are assuaging some of their worst fears about Trump gutting NATO.
The general message they’ve heard so far is, yes, nations must spend more on their defense but Trump will back the alliance and Kyiv’s fight against Russia — even as news emerges that Trump is considering cutting back on intelligence sharing with Europe if he gets back into the Oval Office.
“It won’t be that bad,” said a senior European official who had just met former Trump administration officials. “Trump will be more focused on retribution against his political opponents than NATO. NATO will survive.”
The official pulled out a cellphone to display a Trump TRUTH post from Tuesday as evidence that Trump isn’t as hostile to NATO as he seems. “If it weren’t for me as President, there probably would be no NATO by now,” Trump wrote in the post, but added: “The U.S. is paying most of the money to help Ukraine fight Russia. Europe should at least EQUALIZE!” The Trump campaign separately pointed POLITICO to the same post.
But that call to “equalize” also is exactly the kind of comment foreign allies are trying to get in front of and maybe sway Trump to a less combative stance. Some officials have already started tailoring their transatlantic messaging to please Trump, comparing paying golf club dues to allies contributing their fair share to the alliance.
“NATO is a club. When you have club rules, then you respect the rules and you expect that everyone will also respect the rules,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said at a POLITICO event this week. “When you pay your fee in the golf club, you can play. It doesn’t matter how big is your wallet.”
In a separate interview at the summit, Pevkur said it was premature for Europe to start making contingency plans for Trump’s return. “My advice is not to speculate. My advice is to wait for the election results to see what the actual policy will be. Because one thing is a political campaign, and the other thing is when you're in the office. So let's wait for that and then we can make some improvements.”
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, told POLITICO on Monday that it was important for his country to maintain strong bipartisan relationships. Without Republican support, he said, Biden’s $60 billion military assistance package wouldn’t have made it through Congress, even if it took six months to pass. He did not say if he had met with any Trump representatives.
The Trump question has dominated conversation in and around the NATO Summit, even as whispers about Biden’s fitness persisted. “You can just sense the genuine worry about where the U.S. will go,” said a senior European diplomat from a NATO country. “Stability in the U.S. is so important to us, and everything feels so uneasy.”
The summit started off with a remarkable Biden-Trump split screen. In Washington on Tuesday, Biden delivered a forceful address touting the strength of NATO and its support for Ukraine. “Today, NATO is more powerful than ever,” Biden told dignitaries gathered at the Mellon Auditorium, the same place NATO’s founders signed the charter in 1949.
Meanwhile, Trump told rally-goers in Doral, Florida, that “I didn’t know what the hell NATO was too much before” he became president. “But it didn’t take me long to figure it out, like about two minutes, and the first thing I figured out was they were not paying. We were paying, we were paying almost fully for NATO, and I said that’s unfair.”
Discussions before the summit centered on the need to “Trump proof” NATO and Ukraine policy should the Republican return to power. Republicans and Trump allies have warned in response that loud talk of protecting the alliance against the former president might have the opposite effect.
“It reinforces negative perceptions of the transatlantic policy community among President Trump’s supporters,” said Alex Gray, a former top National Security Council official in the Trump administration who isn’t affiliated with the Republican’s campaign.
Bolton, the former national security aide, said such efforts are “badly mistaken.”
“Do they think Trump’s people aren’t going to find out what they’re doing? They’re shoving it in his face. Do they think they’re making him like NATO more? They’re making things worse,” he said.
But even with the specter of Trump looming, most European officials say they remain focused on strengthening the transatlantic relationship with the administration that’s still in power. “It helps,” a senior NATO official said, “that there’s one government at a time.”
Nahal Toosi and Stuart Lau contributed to this report.
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