President Donald Trump said NATO countries must sharply increase their defense spending, demanding member states push beyond current benchmarks that many of them already struggle to hit.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he was not sure the United States should be spending anything on NATO, telling reporters the U.S. was protecting NATO members, but they were "not protecting us.

I’m also going to ask all NATO nations to increase defense spending to 5% of [gross domestic product], which is what it should have been years ago,” he said in remarks given virtually to the. He noted that “most nations didn’t pay until I came along” in his first term in office.