Trump considering changing NATO policy to favor countries spending more on defense: report

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : "President Trump is committed to NATO and Article V," a National Security Council official told NBC in a statement.
51% : Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Defense and a member of the Foreign Relations panel, told NBC that Matthew Whitaker, the president's nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to the alliance, "gave very reassuring answers" regarding the White House's commitment to NATO and Article 5.
42% : The possible change in U.S. engagement with NATO comes as Trump is pressuring Ukraine to come to the negotiating table to end the war with Russia and as European countries scramble to fill the gap left by a pause in U.S. aid to Ukraine.
40% : Trump has argued that NATO countries should spend five percent of GDP on defense, more than the U.S. currently spends.
38% : " During his first term, Trump threatened to withdraw the U.S. from NATO, and he has raised doubts about the need for Article 5 for the U.S. While the article was initially intended to protect European countries from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, it has only been activated once -- following the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S. in 2001.
36% : Trump has also argued that the threshold should be increased.
24% : But on Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office, Trump made extensive comments denigrating NATO members as unreliable.
24% : On numerous occasions, Trump has slammed NATO members for not reaching the current NATO threshold of spending at least two percent of their GDP on defense.
22% : In January, Trump said, NATO "has to pay more" and that "it's ridiculous because it affects them a lot more.
2% : But Coons also noted that he was "contacted by several European ambassadors concerned about rumors that Trump might make some negative announcement about NATO." "If you're not given pause by everything about President Trump's statements and actions on foreign policy, you're not paying attention," Coons told NBC.

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