However, Mr Bolton disagreed.
“I think it’s very likely that he would leave Nato if re-elected,” he told Le Figaro.
“Trump, when he has an idea, comes back to it again and again, then gets distracted, forgets, but eventually comes back to it and acts on it. That’s why leaving Nato is a real possibility. A lot of people think it’s just a negotiating tool, but I don’t think so.”
“I spent many hours calling on Europeans to spend more on defence, as did so many other American officials. But we did it because we knew that the alliance would be much stronger if the European nations spent what was necessary instead of relying on the Americans,” he said.
Mr Bolton added: “That is not Trump’s aim. He is not insisting on European contributions to strengthen the Alliance but to weaken it and punish our allies who, in his view, have deceived us and forced us to sign unsavoury trade treaties.
“The truth is that, for him, the Europeans are not really our friends.”
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