Several journalists attempted to skewer President Donald Trump on July 16 to push a narrative that Trump doesn’t know Finland isn’t a NATO member state.
Reporters for several media outlets jumped on Trump’s comment to Niinisto, hastily tweeting hot-takes to “get” Trump for suggesting he doesn’t know Finland isn’t a NATO member. However, Niinisto attended the NATO meeting, according to the Finnish government’s official website.
Several reporters and pundits, notably Josh Rogin of CNN and the New York Times, attempted to spin Trump’s statement to force a narrative that Trump doesn’t know what countries are in NATO.
“Trump told the Finnish President Just now he enjoyed spending time with him at the NATO summit,” Rogin wrote on Twitter while tagging his CNN colleagues Jake Tapper and Christiane Amanpour. “Finland is not part of NATO. #awkward.”
Then, when word spread that the Finnish president, Sauli Niinisto, was at the NATO summit in Brussels last week, Rogin tried to defend his earlier tweet.
“Finland is a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace. But focusing on the strength of NATO is still an odd choice of things for Trump to focus on at his one public meeting with Finland’s head of state,” he wrote.
He later admitted that “the Finnish President did attend the NATO summit in Brussels” and linked to a press release from the Finnish government about the meeting.
But it wasn’t just Rogin.
Activities under the program, NATO says, “touch on virtually every field of NATO activity, including defense-related work, defense reform, defense policy and planning, civil-military relations,” and “military-to-military cooperation and exercises.”