Obama, NATO Head Meet in Rebuke as Trump Questions Alliance
- NATO's Jens Stoltenberg meets with president at White House
- Five of 28 NATO members are meeting defense spending goal
President Barack Obama and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speak following a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on April 4, 2016.
Photographer: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty ImagesPresident Barack Obama sat side-by-side with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the Oval Office on Monday, offering a symbolic rebuke to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has questioned whether there’s still a need for the defense alliance.
Obama and Stoltenberg met to discuss last month’s terrorist attacks in Brussels, where NATO has its headquarters, the surge of refugees driven from Syria and Iraq by Islamic State and the alliance’s summit scheduled for July in Warsaw. The political backdrop, though, is November’s election, in which Trump has emerged as the Republican front-runner while questioning U.S. alliances including NATO.