President Donald Trump made false claims about NATO, NASA, foreign policy, taxes, immigration and other subjects in a Fox Business interview that aired Wednesday morning.
Here is a fact check of some of his remarks to Fox host Maria Bartiromo, who let almost all of the falsehoods go unchallenged.
US spending on NATO: Trump declared, “This country should not be paying trillions of dollars to NATO.” At another point in the interview, he asked “why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on NATO” if it will not support the US on the Iran war. But the US does not actually pay NATO trillions of dollars or spend hundreds of billions per year on NATO. Trump appeared to be doing what he has done for years: mix up the country’s own military spending, which is tracked by NATO, with the country’s direct contributions to NATO itself.
The US certainly spends hundreds of billions per year on defense — in the neighborhood of $1 trillion in the 2026 fiscal year — and the Trump administration has made a $1.5 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2027. But only a tiny fraction of that spending is sent to NATO. Under an agreed formula, the US is responsible for about 15% of NATO’s direct funding, which NATO says is about $6.3 billion in 2026 (at current exchange rates) — so under $1 billion in 2026.
Even if the US provides additional funding for NATO initiatives, and even if Trump is counting US defense spending in NATO member countries, Trump’s claims about “paying trillions...
President Donald Trump made false claims about NATO, NASA, foreign policy, taxes, immigration and other subjects in a Fox Business interview that aired Wednesday morning. Here is a fact check of s...