RYAN CHILCOTE:

Well, they have been very reserved, very guarded in their response to President Trump's criticism today.

Don't forget that a good number of the leaders, in fact, those that President Trump, I think, has been hardest on when it comes to their commitments to NATO, are going to see him in Sicily tomorrow, so they don't want a spat with President Trump.

But, you know, they will clearly be very disappointed by the criticism today. A lot of them feel that the place where President Trump delivered his criticism was the wrong place to do it, beside this memorial that effectively wasn't just to U.S. troops, but also to NATO troops who have lost their lives in Afghanistan fighting alongside the United States after NATO invoked Article V.

So they don't like where the comments were made. And then the other issue, of course, is that many of them disagree that they're not doing enough or moving in the right direction to support NATO in terms of their military spending. The president pointed out that 23 out of the 28 NATO members are not spending 2 percent of their budgets on the military at this point — of their GDP.

And they will say that, in fact, if you look at the commitment, they have until 2024 to do that. And here at NATO, from the NATO officials I have talked to, they believe that the vast majority of the NATO countries are well on their way with verifiable plans to do that, with the notable exception of Germany.

But they weren't showing that because they want to work with President Trump, and they clearly believe — and that was very apparent in the language, the body language today — that this is a president that they need to win over. They need to assure him that NATO is something that's in the United States' interest.