Donald Trump Wants to Use 'Obsolete' NATO to Fight ISIS

ByPAOLA CHAVEZ ABCNews logo
Thursday, June 30, 2016

Donald Trump said that he would be open to using NATO forces to fight ISIS despite blasting the alliance in the past as "obsolete," he told ABC News' Tom Llamas Thursday.

"I like the idea of using NATO and also neighbors that aren't in NATO and take them out. You gotta take them out," Trump said ahead of a campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire.

However, Trump has been critical of NATO in the past, calling it "obsolete" and "expensive" in an interview on "This Week" in March.

"It's going to have to be either readjusted to take care of terrorism or we're going to have to set up a new -- a new coalition, a new group of countries to handle terrorism because terrorism is out of control," Trump said of NATO at the time.

In the interview with Llamas, Trump acknowledged that he has not released the details of his plan to defeat ISIS because "everybody's watching."

"I don't like giving away like, 'We're gonna hit them here. We're gonna hit them there.' I like to keep it quiet," Trump said, adding, "We're going to hit them very hard, it's very true, it's very possible that we should use NATO."

Trump told Llamas he saw an advantage in using NATO forces.

"I don't want to get too much of ours involved. I want NATO to be involved," Trump said. "We spend a tremendous amount of money on NATO. We take care of countries that frankly should be taking care of themselves in terms of economically."

Trump also referred to his past comments on NATO.

"I was the one that said NATO is obsolete because they don't cover terrorism properly, you remember that. That was about four months ago, I took a lot of heat," he said. "Three days later they came up and they said, 'Trump is right.'"

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