At a high-stakes summit gathering of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, sitting U.S. President Donald Trump has once again doubled down on his long-standing skepticism of the transatlantic alliance, repeating scathing criticism that has left alliance partners reassessing Washington’s commitment to collective defense. In public comments made during the summit proceedings, Trump made clear that his dissatisfaction with the 75-year-old security pact has not softened, telling attendees and reporters that he has been consistently let down by the organization’s performance and burden-sharing dynamics. Central to his latest round of critique was a blunt assertion of American self-sufficiency: the president declared firmly that the United States “doesn’t need anybody’s help” to guarantee its own national security, a remark that breaks with decades of bipartisan U.S. commitment to NATO’s core principle of collective defense, where an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. Trump’s repeated broadsides against NATO have roiled alliance relations for years, with many European leaders pushing back against his claims that the U.S. carries an unfair share of the alliance’s defense cost burden, while other observers have warned that his persistent criticism erodes the deterrence power that has kept European security stable since the end of World War II. This latest public rebuke comes as the alliance gathers to address shifting global security challenges, from rising great power competition to regional instability, making the White House’s open dissatisfaction a major point of tension on the summit’s agenda.