Here's a commentary from the New Yorker:
"Historical ignorance is a Trump leitmotif. He started attacking Macron on Friday, just before Air Force One landed in Paris, tweeting, “President Macron of France has just suggested that Europe build its own military in order to protect itself from the U.S., China and Russia. Very insulting, but perhaps Europe should first pay its fair share of nato, which the U.S. subsidizes greatly!” Trump returned to the White House on Sunday, skipping the three-day Paris Peace Forum, and on Tuesday morning he resumed his mis-capitalized assault. He tweeted, “Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia. But it was Germany in World Wars One & Two - How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along. Pay for natoor not!” And then: “On Trade, France makes excellent wine, but so does the U.S. The problem is that France makes it very hard for the U.S. to sell its wines into France, and charges big Tariffs, whereas the U.S. makes it easy for French wines, and charges very small Tariffs. Not fair, must change!” Lastly, he took a few weak shots at Macron’s low approval rating at home before thumbing out “make france great again!”
So much historical ignorance crowded into so few characters! Macron, in talking of “building his own army,” was actually talking about doing what Trump supposedly wants him to do, i.e., spending more on the military to let Europe protect itself. (This is, in fact, a long-standing French preoccupation; de Gaulle withdrew the French Navy from nato because he didn’t want to be dependent on the Americans, whom he did not completely trust.) The actual logic of the alliance, from an American point of view, was always supposed to be: let’s all pay something, and we’ll pay even more, because it’s cheaper to protect Europe than it is to fight European wars, and that way we have reliable friends. The point of the alliance was to have allies, not shake-down victims. But long-term altruism for long-term benefit is not a concept that Trump can handle.
Indeed, Trump seems incapable of understanding the concept of an alliance at all, much as he does not seem to understand the concept of loyalty. When he cites someone as a friend, it means that he (usually mistakenly) thinks that the person has adopted a supine position. He’s almost always wrong, as with the case of Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, but it is the limit of his conception of alliances."
