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Trump Participates in a Press Conference at the NATO Summit, Jul. 8, 2026

July 8, 2026 · The White House · 0:40:17

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump held a press conference in Ankara, Turkey on July 8, 2026, at the close of the NATO summit. “We’ve had a tremendous time and I think a great success and we just concluded a very successful NATO summit here in Turkey,” he said, thanking President Erdogan — “a great man, he’s a great leader, he’s a friend of mine” — and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, “an extraordinary person, smart, great leader.” Of the leaders’ session he said: “There was tremendous love in that room… every one of them spoke for a little while and I spoke for a little while.”

The President reviewed the administration’s campaign, as he stated it, to raise allied defense spending and field equipment “that no other country in the world has,” and he described the military results against Iran in detail — its navy, aircraft, radar, and leadership “totally decimated,” in his account, with combat capability “pretty low” and only a small percentage of its missiles left. He also pointed to Venezuela as a further demonstration of American capability.

Why it matters

A summit-closing press conference is the formal readout an administration gives its own trip. This one is the dated record of how the President presented the 2026 NATO summit — allied unity and spending as he described them, and the Iran campaign’s results as he stated them — filed here on the Foreign Policy & Defense hub.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the President’s summit claims on allied defense spending and on the state of Iran’s military are dated, checkable markers set down at the alliance’s own podium. Noted for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Press Conference, Jul. 8, 2026,” Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President at the press conference.