Biden spotlights support for NATO as he looks to use summit to help reset stumbling campaign
Associated PressWASHINGTON — President Joe Biden welcomed NATO leaders to Washington on Tuesday by celebrating their unity against Russia’s Ukraine aggression and underscoring America’s ironclad commitment to the alliance under his watch — a message that seemed aimed at bucking up his own wobbly Democratic supporters as much as allies confronting the prospect of a return to the White House of NATO skeptic Donald Trump. President Joe Biden meets with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the Oval Office at the White House, June 17, 2024 Still, the head of Italy’s anti-migrant League Party, deputy premier Matteo Salvini, offered that Biden’s “health condition does not seem very good to me.” Salvini is a junior member of Premier Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government. The gathering of the leaders from the 32 NATO countries — plus Pacific partners Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, as well as Ukraine — is expected to be one of Biden’s last appearances at an international forum before Election Day and comes before next week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “It could be easy to look around in Washington this week and see the unity, the resolve, the capabilities of NATO today and say, that’s just the natural order of things,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, “But it isn’t just the natural order of things.