In a rare moment of bipartisan accord, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly praised President Donald Trump’s recent foreign policy moves, calling his leadership in securing unprecedented NATO defense commitments “encouraging” and a sign of renewed common ground between the United States and its allies.
Speaking Friday on the podcast Raging Moderates, Clinton said she was “genuinely heartened” by the president’s role in persuading NATO members to dramatically increase their defense spending — from the long-standing 2 percent benchmark to 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035 — and in securing a deal for the alliance to fund U.S.-made weapons for Ukraine.
“I actually was encouraged by the events of the last several months,” Clinton said. “First of all, the NATO commitment by individual member states to increase their defense spending is very welcome. It’s something that prior administrations have certainly sought. And I think it’s great that we are seeing these commitments that now have to be followed through on.”
Clinton added that the willingness of European countries to arm Ukraine with American weapons was “a very good signal” of a maturing relationship between Trump and NATO leaders.
“The kind of dismissiveness that we saw in the first Trump administration has been replaced by a much more obvious working relationship to the good of European security, transatlantic security, and hopefully Ukrainian security,” she said.
The president himself underscored the significance of the agreement in a July 10 interview with NBC News, noting that NATO would cover the cost of U.S.-supplied Patriot missile shipments to Ukraine — a deal he said was reached during the June NATO summit in The Hague.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte went further, publicly crediting Trump’s personal role in securing the historic spending commitments. Speaking on The New York Times’ The Interview in July, Rutte called Trump “daddy” at the summit, saying, “When somebody deserves praise, that praise should be given.
And President Trump deserves all the praise. Because without his leadership, without him being reelected President of the United States, the 2% this year and the 5% in 2035 — we would never, ever, ever have been able to achieve agreement on this.”
The praise has not been limited to traditional allies. Chris Cuomo, the NewsNation host often critical of the president, commended Trump’s foreign policy on a July episode of The Chris Cuomo Project, awarding him a “B” grade and citing both the NATO funding deal and America’s June bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Iran alone was a great stopgap measure,” Cuomo said. “There’s no question that the bombing sent a very strong message to the regime. Their proxies have been beaten down thanks mostly to Israel, but also American intervention. And their nuclear program has been slowed.”
U.S. intelligence agencies, along with the Iranian government itself, have acknowledged that the strikes caused significant damage to Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure — a result that supporters argue underscores Trump’s willingness to pair tough diplomacy with decisive military action.
For a president long portrayed as a NATO skeptic, the past several months have brought a striking reversal — not only in tone but in substance — leaving even some of his most consistent critics admitting that, at least on this front, Trump delivered.
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