President Donald Trump, 79, is under fire from Republicans in Congress over his decision to yank 5,000 troops from military posts in Germany.
Republican lawmakers said they were “very concerned” by the decision and defended Germany from claims by the president that the country has been slow to honor agreements.
“Germany has stepped up in response to President Trump’s call for greater burden sharing, significantly increasing defense spending and providing seamless access, basing, and overflight for U.S. forces in support of Operation Epic Fury,” said the House Armed Services Committee in a statement.
“Prematurely reducing America’s forward presence in Europe before those capabilities are fully realized risks undermining deterrence and sending the wrong signal to Vladimir Putin.”
Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi chairs the Senate committee, and Mike Rogers of Alabama is his counterpart in the House.
The two issued the statement on Saturday to flag their opposition to the Trump-led Pentagon’s decision to withdraw troops and cancel the Army’s Long-Range Fires Battalion deployment.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the change on Friday, following through on an apparent threat Trump made earlier in the week, after he was enraged by criticism from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Merz issued a withering assessment of Trump’s Iran war on Monday, telling students “an entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership,” and that the U.S. “quite obviously went into this war without any strategy.”
The president did not take the criticism on the chin.
In a series of posts on Truth Social, the president raged at the German leader, saying “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“The chancellor of Germany should spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine (Where he has been totally ineffective!), and fixing his broken country,” Trump railed.
In a separate post on the same day, the president said the U.S. was “studying and reviewing the possible reduction of troops in Germany.”
Germany is home to one of the largest U.S. military presences in the world, and this decision does not change that.
Wicker and Rogers are urging the president to reconsider his plan and instead redeploy the troops in Eastern Europe.
“Rather than withdrawing forces from the continent altogether, it is in America’s interest to maintain a strong deterrent in Europe by moving these 5,000 U.S. forces to the east,” their statement read.
“Allies there have made substantial investments to host U.S. troops, reducing costs for the U.S. taxpayer while strengthening NATO’s front line to help deter a far more costly conflict from ever beginning.
They warned that “significant changes” to U.S. forces in Europe would require the president and Hegseth to engage with congressional oversight.
The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
