Donald Trump calls out Australia for not joining the fight against Iran: ‘You know who else didn’t help us?’
US President Donald Trump has once again lashed Australia for not helping join their war against Iran.
‘You know who else didn’t help us? Australia didn’t help us,’ he said during a White House press briefing overnight.
‘Japan didn’t help us, Australia didn’t help us, South Korea didn’t help us!’
Trump repeatedly attacked the NATO alliance towards the end of the 90-minute press conference, noting his disappointment with the organisation for its failure to help US military objectives in Iran.
‘I’m very disappointed in NATO, very,’ Trump said. ‘I think it’s a mark on NATO that will never disappear in my mind, you know they’re coming to see me on Wednesday and all of a sudden they want to send things.
‘But they said it loud and clear at the beginning when I spoke to the UK said we’d love to have a little help and they said, “No sir, we’d rather wait til you win.”‘
He went further: ‘NATO is a paper tiger. We didn’t need them by the way, we didn’t need them obviously because they haven’t helped at all, just the opposite. They actually went out of their way not to help.’
The US president had held the briefing to discuss new details about the daring rescue mission to extract a wounded US airman who spent almost 48 hours stranded in Iran.
Donald Trump called out Australia directly for not helping the US in the war against Iran
Anthony Albanese previously said it was ‘not clear what more needs to be achieved’ in Iran
Trump lauded the US forces who’d swooped into mountainous terrain in southern Iran to rescue the weapons systems officer (WSO) whose F-15E fighter jet went down on Good Friday.
‘He scaled cliff faces, bleeding rather profusely, contacted his platoon, treated his own wounds and contacted American forces,’ Trump said of the still unidentified officer, who was rescued on Easter Sunday.
The pilot was rescued the day of the crash after both airmen ejected over enemy territory, but the WSO had remained missing.
Trump also lashed out at the media for reporting that the second airman was still missing, accusing outlets of alerting the Iranians to a target.
He warned that ‘the person who reported the story will go to jail’ if they refuse to reveal their source – and as it was unclear which reporter Trump was referring to, speculation ran rampant online.
More to come.
