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Satirical blog “Breaking Burgh” offered us one amusing scenario for what happened when Trump tried to bill Germany $375 billion for protection services rendered:

When asked how she planned to respond to the demand, Merkel implied she would be taking her lead from President Trump.



“Tell Donald I’m going to treat his ‘invoice’ just like he treats the ones from his contractors and caterers. Ha!”

Good answer. Wouldn’t be surprised, though it’s satire if that was how Merkel actually responded. The story certainly explains Angela Merkel’s expression when she looked at Trump during their joint presser.

The White House is denying the event ever took place, of course. You know, because it’s embarrassing to have a president so colossally ignorant of how the world works after he repeatedly assures us with “Nobody knows the system better than I do.”

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And here he thought NATO worked like his golf resorts, with membership fees. No wonder he wants to deny it now. The only problem is that Trump is a liar. He also wanted us to believe he was holding meetings until it turned out he was golfing this weekend.

The fact is, Trump did insist in tweets that Germany owed the U.S. money. Just this past March 18 he tweeted,

“Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”

And Trump is on record as saying, “I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter.”

It’s just a shame he doesn’t understand facts. At all. Or NATO. Or nearly anything else you care to name.

And unfortunately for Trump, real reactions to his massively stupid faux pas aren’t much kinder than satirical.

Paul Krugman put it plainly when he said,

“Trump is worse than you could have imagined, even knowing that he’s worse than you could have imagined.”

No arguing with that. We get that Trump does not understand how NATO funding works. What is more difficult to understand is how his advisors fail to protect him from himself:

During transition, sr official told me Trump wrongly thought NATO members pay dues to US. How could aides not correct & stop such a blunder? https://t.co/2lv78PloAZ — Indira Lakshmanan (@Indira_L) March 26, 2017

So Trump thought Germany owed the U.S. money back during the transition and was tweeting the same nonsense only a week ago. Did he bill Germany?

There is every reason to believe he did, and no reason to believe his lies that he did not.

How did this happen? A president who fellow billionaire Mark Cuban complains refuses to learn anything new, and the equally ignorant “yes” men Trump has chosen to surround himself with.

As Joy Reid put it, “Think about that for a moment. Trump, an adult who ran for president and won, thought NATO members pay dues to the U.S. like protection $.”

It is painful to think about, to be honest. This is a man who tells us he’s so smart, but he’s so stupid, and then makes up for his ignorance of the world it by lying about it. What could possibly go wrong?