Did NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte publicly say that "if Trump surrenders Ukraine to Putin, he will personally expel the United States from the alliance"? No, that's not true: A NATO spokesperson described the claim as "bogus." The rumor was promoted by a Russian propaganda website and anonymous pro-Kremlin Telegram channels.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on November 10, 2024. It said:
🚨 BREAKING: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says that 'If Trump surrenders Ukraine to Putin, he will personally expel the United States from the alliance'.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Nov 11 15:23:26 2024 UTC)
NATO press officer Daniele Riggio (archived here) told Lead Stories via email on November 11, 2024:
This claim is bogus.
Since Donald Trump won the November 5, 2024, U.S. presidential election (archived here), Rutte made two major statements about it.
As NATO's top international civil servant (archived here), he congratulated the U.S. president-elect the next day. That statement (archived here) reads:
Through NATO, the US has 31 friends and Allies who help to advance US interests, multiply American power and keep Americans safe ...
When President-elect Trump takes office again on January 20, he will be welcomed by a stronger, larger, and more united Alliance.
In the same statement, Rutte additionally emphasized that "two-thirds of Allies now spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence." That addressed the criticism (archived here) previously voiced by Trump, who insisted during his first term that other NATO members didn't spend enough.
Two days after the U.S. election, Rutte made another statement (archived here), repeating that he "looks forward" to working with Trump again, thanked him for "stimulating" Allies' defense spending and opened a possibility of a new spending target that exceeds 2%.
Additionally, Rutte wrote on X (archived here) that he personally spoke with Trump.
Lead Stories found no credible sources attributing the quote from the post on X to Rutte. A search across Google News for the keywords seen here (archived here) produced a single result: A Newsweek fact check (archived here) that reviewed the same claim and found no evidence corroborating the rumor.
At the same time, search results showed signs of a coordinated campaign boosting the unsubstantiated rumor.
The claim was actively promoted by pro-Kremlin websites in the Pravda network. But different articles published there -- for example, here (archived here), here (archived here) and here (archived here) -- cited different sources, ranging from anonymous Telegram channels to pro-Kremlin Russian TV Channel Tsargrad TV (archived here) that, in turn, also cited a Telegram channel.
Those entries on Telegram didn't offer any verifiable details about the place or the date of the purported statement.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Donald Trump can be found here. Fact checks of claims about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here; of claims about the Russian-Ukrainian war are here.
