Donald Trump sparks outrage over Nato troops claim
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
World leaders and army veterans have rejected President Trump's claim that Nato service personnel did not fight on the front lines or play a key part during the US-led war in Afghanistan. We speak to a former secretary general of Nato, whose alliance sent thousands of international troops to fight during the invasion.
Also in the programme: grim reports continue to emerge from Iran; why Nelson Mandela's family is fighting to keep his belongings from an auction; and does celebrated political scientist Francis Fukuyama believe this is the end of the "rules-based" international order?
(Photo: US President Donald Trump speaks as he meets with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, US, October 22, 2025. Credit: Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.3 | Hello and welcome to News Air from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.7 | We're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm James Menendez. |
| 0:15.7 | And coming up later on the program. |
| 0:17.5 | After the threats to Greenland, it's very hard to see how any European ally is going to trust the United States again. |
| 0:26.1 | The problem is deeper than Trump. |
| 0:29.2 | Trump has created a very toxic, nationalistic right, and his successor, whoever that may be, is, I think, going to continue some of this anti-European policy. |
| 0:42.6 | The celebrated American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, best known for his book, The End of History and the Last Man, |
| 0:49.5 | tells us about an indelible rift in the Transatlantic alliance and a crisis in liberal democracy. |
| 0:56.5 | We'll hear more from him in 45 minutes. |
| 1:00.1 | Well, after a week in which the strength of the NATO military alliance hung in the balance |
| 1:04.7 | over President Trump's ambition to take control of Greenland, another row has broken out to test |
| 1:10.2 | those fraying threads. It came off to comments that |
| 1:13.3 | Mr. Trump made about America's NATO allies during an interview with Fox News on Thursday. |
| 1:18.7 | We've never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. You know, they'll say they |
| 1:24.4 | send some troops to Afghanistan or this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, a little off the front lines. |
| 1:30.9 | But we've been very good to Europe and to many other countries. |
| 1:36.6 | That prompted a swift and angry response from several countries that Mr. Trump was referring to. |
| 1:42.3 | More than 50 in all, some NATO, some non-NATO, |
| 1:45.4 | that fought alongside US forces in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. |
| 1:50.5 | In fact, those attacks prompted the first and only use of NATO's collective security clause |
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