Vice President Kamala Harris claimed in the ABC presidential debate on Tuesday evening that world leaders are “laughing” at former President Donald Trump.
“I have travelled the world as Vice President of the United States and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump. I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you [Trump], and they say you are a disgrace,” Harris said.
Mr Trump has previously elicited laughter from international leaders. During a speech delivered as president to the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, Mr Trump warned of the over-dependence on nations such as Russia for energy.
“Reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave a nation vulnerable to extortion and intimidation,” then-President Trump warned. “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.”
The German U.N. delegation was filmed openly laughing at the warning. However, following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany, the economic powerhouse of Europe, was plunged into an energy crisis as Russian gas and oil shipments were cut off and the Nord Stream pipelines connecting the two countries were sabotaged.
While President Trump effectively blocked the completion of the Nord Stream pipelines with sanctions, his successor, President Joe Biden faced bi-partisan criticism for lifting the sanctions in 2021, the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Despite warnings from Trump, Berlin sought to push ahead with the project. It was later revealed by a declassified document that the former German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel believed that increasing its reliance on Russian energy through Nord Stream would “not jeopardize the security” of energy supplies to Germany and the EU.
Germany’s reliance on Russia for gas and oil turned out to be a catastrophic mistake, with the country still reeling economically to this day, with reports emerging this month that top auto manufacturer Volkswagen is considering shutting down factories in Germany for the first time in company history, in part due to soaring energy costs.
During his time in the White House, the former president was also frequently at odds with Germany for its consistent failure to meet its NATO military spending requirements despite being the richest country in Europe. Mr Trump argued that it was unfair for Germany to rely on American taxpayer dollars for its defence while sending billions of euros to Russia for gas and oil.
Although there were frequent assertions, including from Joe Biden, that Trump’s rhetoric would threaten the very existence of NATO, in 2019, the secretary general of the Western military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, credited Trump’s approach as having pressured allies into increasing their military spending by $100 billion.
NATO figures show that between 2017 and 2020, the number of Western allies meeting their 2 per cent of GDP military spending requirement more than doubled, from just four nations to nine.
Responding to Harris’ claims on Tuesday evening, Mr Trump cited support from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has asserted that the former American president is the only leader on the world stage who is “strong enough” to bring an end to the war in Urkaine, declaring in February: “Peace has a name, that of Donald Trump.”
