Politico Magazine reported Monday morning that President Trump’s NATO address last month was altered, unbeknownst to his national security team, to remove language supporting Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which stipulates that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all members. From Politico Magazine:
[T]he president […] disappointed—and surprised—his own top national security officials by failing to include the language reaffirming the so-called Article 5 provision in his speech. National security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson all supported Trump doing so and had worked in the weeks leading up to the trip to make sure it was included in the speech, according to five sources familiar with the episode. They thought it was, and a White House aide even told The New York Times the day before the line was definitely included.
It was not until the next day, Thursday, May 25, when Trump started talking at an opening ceremony for NATO’s new Brussels headquarters, that the president’s national security team realized their boss had made a decision with major consequences—without consulting or even informing them in advance of the change.
According to Politico Magazine’s Susan Glasser, people in the administration believe that the language was taken out either by Trump himself or at the request of advisers Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller. White House surrogates including National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley have since been forced to insist that the United States remains committed to Article 5. “I mean, I think if you asked him if he was in favor of Article 5, he would say that yes, he is,” Haley told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview broadcast Sunday.
