Sen. Tim Kaine says Trump should have respected NATO allies if he wanted their help

U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) shared a vivid analysis on why U.S. allies, including NATO, did not join his efforts to get Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz. Kaine blamed the president for "trashing NATO" for years and not consulting his allies before launching the strikes in the region alongside Israel. Speaking to ABC's "This Week", the Congressman compared the situation to a bar fight. He explained that if the president wanted help from his allies, he should have valued and respected them instead of slapping tariffs on their economies. 

Sen. Kaine expressed that Trump really hurt NATO in the past by threatening to leave the 32-member transatlantic alliance, calling Canada the 51st state and trying to take Greenland, which is a part of Denmark, another NATO ally.  "Then he starts a war without consulting with them that has a huge effect on NATO allies' economy, and then gets mad they won't join in," Kaine told host Martha Raddatz. While Kaine added that Trump can't unilaterally pull out of the alliance, he can still weaken it by pulling out U.S. troops. He then went on to compare the current spat between Trump and NATO to a bar fight, saying, "You don't sucker punch somebody in a bar and then blame your buddies when they don't join the fight with you," the senator said. He went on to add that if he wanted their support, "he should have valued allies and respected them, rather than putting tariffs on their economies and trash-talking them."

This comes after President Trump yet again attacked NATO for supporting the U.S. in the Iran war following a private meeting with the alliance's Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House. In a post shared to Truth Social, Trump wrote: "NATO WASN'T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON'T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN." Meanwhile, speaking to CNN, Rutte described the meeting as "very frank" and "very open", mentioning that Trump wasn't happy with the "slow" movement of support. 

When White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about NATO's role in the war, she quoted the president claiming NATO was "tested and they failed", BBC reported. Leavitt told reporters that NATO members had "turned their back" on the U.S., which funded their nations' defense. Meanwhile, Rutte claimed that European countries didn't stand in the way of the U.S. operation, and they provided help with logistics and overflights during the conflict.

Sen. Kaine further slammed the president for withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Iran Nuclear deal under which Tehran had agreed never to develop a nuclear weapon. “I think that decision by President Trump to tear up a diplomatic deal will go down in history as one of the worst decisions in the foreign policy space ever made by an American president,” he said. Kaine explained that any negotiations now won't be easy, as Iran would be afraid that the U.S. will again tear the agreements apart and bomb the country without provocation.  “If you make diplomacy impossible, you tend to make war inevitable,” Kaine added.