Trump hands Merkel a bullshit bill for $374B

[Defensive_Indifference]

I posted this over in the other thread:

@Bayard

As much as I hate Trump and find him to be an embarassment of the highest magnitude, I don’t buy this one either. My WAG is that some German official, speaking on background to a reporter, said something like, “So, Merkel comes over here and this guy not only refuses to shake her hand he literally* gives her an invoice for the $300 billion he thinks we haven’t paid NATO, because he’s too stupid to understand that’s not how NATO works!” And that somehow evolved into this story. Not that I think Trump wouldn’t do it, just that the evidence for it is ridiculously thin, and, as JohnT notes, if Trump had done that, he would have bragged about it.

*literally: adj. figuratively

@Skywatcher

Now we supposedly have an anonymous member of the German government telling BuzzFeed (and only BuzzFeed) that the invoice doesn’t exist.

I wonder why someone would request anonymity to say that it didn’t happen. Don’t you usually ask for anonymity to reveal embarrassing information? It’s like the source thinks it’s more risky to actually say something that vindicates Trump than to pile on.