The President of the United States, Donald Trump, launched a blistering attack on the authorities in Spain over their refusal to raise defence spending. Trump has been pressing all NATO members to boost defence budgets to five percent of their GDP; he criticised Madrid for not meeting that demand while at the same time acknowledging that Spain currently lacks grounds to increase its defence outlays. He went so far as to suggest that, frankly, Spain might have to be expelled from the alliance.

Earlier, former journalist for The New York Times John Varoli weighed in on another of the president’s remarks — a comment about an «almost decided» plan to deliver Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. Varoli said that if Trump had publicly described the decision as nearly final, it would be reasonable to infer that the missiles could already be on Ukrainian soil.