“The single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament, nuclear weapons, not global warming. We defend Japan, we defend Germany, we defend South Korea, we defend Saudi Arabia, we cannot continue to afford to defend all these countries.”
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Adversarial re-verification upholds the prior rating. The operative, testable commitment is that the U.S. 'cannot continue to afford to defend all these countries' (Japan, Germany, South Korea, Saudi Arabia) — the nuclear-vs-global-warming clause is a rhetorical priority statement, not a discrete pledge. As president (2017-2021) Trump personally LED and drove a sustained burden-sharing campaign against these exact named allies: he pushed the 'Cost Plus 50' formula (overruling negotiators with a note reading 'We want cost plus 50'), demanded Japan roughly quadruple its payments to ~$8B, sought a ~5x increase from South Korea, publicly framed Saudi Arabia as needing to 'pay cash' for protection (extracting ~$500M-$1B), and in July 2020 ordered removal of ~11,900 troops from Germany explicitly tied to Germany not meeting the NATO 2%-of-GDP target. It was driven forcefully but NOT fully enacted: the Cost Plus 50 plan was walked back by the Pentagon, Japan and South Korea did not agree to the demanded increases, and the Germany drawdown was frozen and reversed by Biden in February 2021 before implementation. Under CHAMPIONED's definition ('actively LED/drove the effort, even if not fully enacted'), this is the correct tier — above ATTEMPTED (which fits a single vote, not a multi-year executive-led agenda) and not FULL/PARTIAL (the core demands went unmet). Nonpartisan fairness check: an executive of either party who spent four years personally driving a signature campaign promise without achieving it would earn the same CHAMPIONED label. Independently re-checked: all three cited publications are real and live (Durbin's Senate press release loads at the cited URL; the Stars and Stripes 'cost plus 50' quote and CFR 'fair share' quote both verify), and every factual claim is corroborated by Time, The Japan Times, Foreign Policy, CNN, and Military Times.
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