It's disturbing how uninformed some of the comments are regarding President Trump's recent strong messages to our European allies, especially Germany.  Consider this basic overview about a key element that he rightly expressed concern about regarding the German energy plan:

• Fact #1: Germany was a lead proponent of the Paris "Accord."  In that agreement, the signatories have identified "climate change" as a matter of utmost importance.
• Fact #2: Those same countries (with Germany leading the way) promised that they will make significant CO2 reductions shortly.
• Fact #3: Essentially none of those countries are actually meeting their promised CO2 reductions – and in some cases CO2 has gone up!
• Fact #4: Over the last 50-plus years, the number one worldwide source of CO2 reduction has been nuclear energy.
• Fact #5: Despite claiming the urgency of making CO2 reductions, under political pressure from alarmists, Germany chose to shut down its functioning nuclear facilities.
• Fact #6: Germany's energy "plan" (Energiewende) was to have nuclear base-load generation replaced by renewables – a technical impossibility.
• Fact #7: This reality dawned on them when this voluntary reduction in reliable electrical energy generation put Germany in a difficult spot – and they started experiencing an increasing number of brownouts and blackouts.
• Fact #8: To compensate for the deficiency of their own unscientific political energy actions, Germany needed to quickly add significant reliable electrical generation.
• Fact #9: The best choice (of not very good remaining options) is to add natural gas electrical energy facilities.
• Fact #10: Natural gas electrical energy facilities generate significantly more CO2 than nuclear electrical energy facilities do.
• Fact #11: Germany's current best source of natural gas is Russia.
• Fact #12: Russian fossil fuel exports produce 16%± of Russia's GDP, 52%± of its government's revenue, and 70%± of its exports.
• Fact #13: Russian natural gas to Europeans is currently more expensive that what U.S. natural gas sells for here.
• Fact #14: Russia has already used natural gas as a political tool – by raising the price, threatening to turn it off, etc.
• Fact #15: Germany is putting itself (and NATO, and the U.S.) at considerable risk by having such a dependence on Russian natural gas.

Again, none of this was necessary, until Germany shot itself in the foot by closing nuclear facilities – just to politically satisfy green lobbyists.

Despite what may appear in mainstream media, this is the gist of the message that President Trump conveyed to our allies (some publicly, some privately).

In my view, his strong statements were fully warranted, as the German actions throughout this whole matter have been atrocious and irresponsible – and are detrimental to the interests of the U.S.