Will Trump pull the US out of NATO?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Donald Trump has said he is 'strongly considering' pulling the US out of NATO, in comments made to the Telegraph – and it doesn't appear to be an April Fool. This isn't the first time he has rallied against the Alliance so should the UK take him seriously? Plus – what is Keir Starmer's strategy? – as he tries to balance a testing transatlantic relationship with pursuing closer relations with the EU.
Patrick Gibbons speaks to Tim Shipman and James Heale.
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. |
| 0:08.8 | I'm Patrick Gibbons and today I'm joined by Tim Shipman and James Hill. |
| 0:12.3 | This morning, the telegraph is reporting that in an interview with them, Trump has said he is strongly considering pulling out of NATO, calling the Alliance a paper tiger. |
| 0:21.8 | Not the first time that Trump has rallied against NATO. Tim, is he serious? Who knows is the short answer? There |
| 0:27.0 | was a lot of these noises during the first Trump term, and in the end, Theresa May and others |
| 0:33.1 | kind of talked him around. I think his mood is now pretty sour as a result of the rest of the West, |
| 0:40.0 | refusing really to join him with offensive operations against Iran and more specifically to open up |
| 0:44.6 | the Straits of Hormuz. And, you know, there have been a lot of snide comments in the last few days |
| 0:49.4 | about individual countries, including our own, get your own oil out, that sort of thing. And it |
| 0:54.0 | sounds like the |
| 0:54.6 | Iranians are now going to tax access to the straight. So look, Stama spent a lot of last year |
| 1:00.9 | using whatever political capital he had with Trump to try and keep him on side with NATO and |
| 1:06.3 | keep him on side with the war in Ukraine as, you know, the sort of battle on the eastern flank of NATO. Trump has |
| 1:13.1 | clearly come in with an agenda, which is that Europeans should pay their way in NATO, and he |
| 1:18.9 | extracted sort of future concessions on how much people's defence spending would go up. But he does |
| 1:25.1 | not inherently have any love or respect for NATO. He thinks |
| 1:29.0 | it's a bunch of freeloading Europeans. Over the years, he's been right. A lot of the pledges |
| 1:33.2 | that have been made have not really been backed up by cash, particularly not in this country. |
| 1:37.4 | And it's understandable if he's reissuing those threats. Now, there are a lot of people, |
| 1:42.6 | even now, despite sort of Maga's approach to world affairs, |
| 1:48.3 | there were still a lot of people in the American system who think NATO is vital to American security |
| 1:53.1 | and Western security, and Trump is very good at issuing threats. But is this something he fundamentally |
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