Trump blurted that to the Germans around 2019. The press brushed it off as "highly misleading".
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/trump-is-exaggerating-german...
And the Germans literally laughed in his face: https://youtu.be/FfJv9QYrlwg
Pretty hard to watch now. The smugness is palpable.
Then the article spends significant time pointing out that Russian natural gas plays only a small part in Germany's total demands in energy, citing numbers like 20% & 13% and thus Trump's claim is am exaggeration.
And then goes on to say:
> To be sure, Russia also accounted for about 40 percent of Germany's crude oil imports and 30 percent of its foreign coal supplies in 2016, according to IEA. But that hardly makes it an outlier in Europe.
How is that glossed over? Is it just me or - I hate to say it - Trump actually had a point?
Obviously this point is _highly_ debatable but it is worth consideration. And it is not like the US hasn't benefited from the military industrial complex. Though I do think the funding structure could be reworked or we at least acknowledge that this is what is happening.
I'm not sure why people are afraid to say this. He has literally said everything under the sun. You throw enough darts and you're bound to eventually hit the board. Supporters just focus on the hits and don't pay attention to the misses, but this isn't different from any populist (I mean look at Musk. If you keep predicting that autopilot is a year away you'll eventually be right and that's all we'll ever remember)
EU/Germany energy politics were/are a trainwreck and that was obvious for at least a decade. Instead of recognizing the obvious warning in 2014, most of the continent doubled down on Russia energy dependency.
As a citizen of EU county - this is depressing. Most of our political elite should be locked up somewhere and keys tossed away. They are directly responsible for the clusterf*ck that follows.