New Telegraph

Trump planned to stop $1.5bn aid to Nigeria, says ex-US NSA

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former United States National Security Adviser (NSA), John Bolton, has alleged that President Donald Trump once argued that the $1.5 billion aid given annually to Nigeria should be stopped, while he pushed for funds to be released for the US-Mexico border wall.

 

 

The former NSA, in his highly anticipated book, titled “In the Room Where It Happened”, claimed that the U.S. President also said funding for military operations in Afghanistan and Syria should be reduced.

 

According to Bolton, who left Trump’s administration last year, the President wondered why America was still providing aids to Africa and “made it clear he wanted out of Africa altogether.”

 

He said Trump complained of how Nigeria receives $1.5 billion annual aid from the U.S. and still refused to buy its agricultural produce.

 

“Following more chatter, Patrick Shanahan (then US Defence Secretary) turned to the cost reductions that maintaining the counter-terrorism capability would entail. But before he got too far, Trump broke in to complain about Congress’ refusal to fund the Mexico border wall,” he wrote.

 

 

“Then he was off, ‘Why can’t we just get out of Syria and Afghanistan? I never should have agreed to the other two hundred (in Syria), and it’s really 400 anyway…’ Then after literally 45 seconds back on Afghanistan, Trump asked, ‘Why are we in Africa?’

 

 

“He soon made it clear he wanted out of Africa altogether, expounding for some time on our $22 trillion national debt, followed by the problems of our balance-of-trade deficits, followed by complaining, again, about how Nigeria received $1.5 billion annually in foreign aid, as he said the President of Nigeria had confirmed to him in an earlier visit, even though they wouldn’t buy US farm produce.”

 

 

Bolton further claimed that Trump argued that the U.S. should cut funding to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, while funds should be released for the construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border.

 

 

Trump’s administration had made attempts to prevent the release of the book which is scheduled for June 23 but a U.S. court ruled against that.

 

 

Ruling on the suit, Royce Lamberth, a judge, said the government failed to prove “irreparable harm” by halting the book’s publication since much of its contents have already been disclosed through media reports.

 

 

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