The day after he dropped his threat to seize territory from NATO ally Denmark, President Trump found a different way to outrage alliance members. "We've never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them," he told Fox News on Thursday. "You know, they'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that, and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front line." His comments clashed sharply with the record of the 20-year war, in which Britain lost 457 service members, Canada 165, and Denmark 44—among the highest casualty rates relative to population, Politico reports. Just under a third of the 3,621 coalition troops killed in Afghanistan were not American. In the UK, pushback came from across the political spectrum.
- British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the remarks "insulting and frankly appalling," reports the New York Times. Asked if Trump should apologize, he responded that if had "misspoken in that way or said those words, I would certainly apologize."
- NATO's Article 5, which states that an attack on one member should be considered an attack on all, "has only been triggered once. The UK and NATO allies answered the US call," Defense Secretary John Healey said in a post on X. "And more than 450 British personnel lost their lives in Afghanistan. Those British troops should be remembered for who they were: heroes who gave their lives in service of our nation."
- Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said, "Trump saying NATO allies 'weren't on the front line' in Afghanistan is flat-out nonsense. British, Canadian, and NATO troops fought and died alongside the US for 20 years. This is a fact, not opinion."
- In a post on X, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said, "457 British troops lost their lives in Afghanistan. Trump avoided military service 5 times. How dare he question their sacrifice."
- Diane Dernie, whose son Ben Parkinson was the most severely injured British soldier to survive the war, called Trump's remarks "stunning" and "insulting," the Telegraph reports. "I can assure you the Taliban didn't plant IEDs miles and miles back from the front line," she said."To say that British troops, NATO forces, were not involved on the front lines—it's just a childish man trying to deflect from his own actions, and it's just beyond belief."
Trump's remarks were also strongly criticized in Canada, CTV News reports. "We were the frontline," said retired corporal Bruce Moncur. "We took over Kandahar from the Americans because of their war in Iraq. We alleviated those forces so they could move to Iraq. We were as frontline as frontline can get." He said he was "enraged" by Trump's remarks. Moncur was severely injured in a 2006 friendly fire attack that killed one platoon member and wounded dozens of others. "An American A-10 Warthog fired on our position without looking at his coordinates," he said.
- Earlier this week, after Trump questioned whether NATO would help the US in a crisis, Mark Rutte, secretary general of NATO, said, "You can be assured, absolutely, if ever the United States was under attack, your allies will be with you," per the Guardian. "There is an absolute guarantee. I really want to tell you that, because it pains me if you think it is not."
- In a post on Truth Social Thursday evening, Trump said, "Maybe we should have put NATO to the test: Invoked Article 5, and forced NATO to come here and protect our Southern Border from further Invasions of Illegal Immigrants, thus freeing up large numbers of Border Patrol Agents for other tasks."
(This story was updated to include the comments of the British prime minister.)
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