It would be hard to have missed this, but maybe you did. At a campaign rally on Saturday, as reported by the Associated Press, Donald Trump stated that, “as president, he warned NATO allies that he ‘would encourage’ Russia ‘to do whatever the hell they want’ to countries that are ‘delinquent.’” I know, you’re thinking that’s just one of my attempts at satire, but that’s not the case this time. He did say that.

I’m guessing he meant they were not paying their membership dues. But NATO members don’t pay dues, they spend money to bolster their own defenses. The idea is that if any member is attacked, all the others will be ready to come to that member’s aid.

Are you listening, Putin? Donald is telling you that if he manages to arrive back at the Oval Office, he will let you do whatever heinous acts you wish to any nation that doesn’t pay up. And this is coming from the man who a New York State judge has found liable for committing millions of dollars in fraud over many years in his business practices and is about to lose his license to do business at all in that state.

How does a man whose companies have declared bankruptcy six times, three of them Atlantic City casinos, have the gall to point fingers at anyone for being financially irresponsible? As The New York Times reported in 2016, “even as his companies did poorly, Mr. Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.”

I so did not want to write about him again and had hoped to write something else, perhaps about an experience I had while grocery shopping this week. I was waiting to check out and had finally reached the person at the register when the man behind me in line said, “Excuse me, is this yours?” When I turned to look, he was holding my credit card! I must have dropped it while unloading my cart. I thanked him profusely for his honesty and kindness and what he said next I won’t soon forget. He told me that at some point in his life, he had lost his wallet containing considerable cash. But it was found and returned to him not long after with everything still inside, including the cash. By handing me back my credit card, he was paying forward what had been given to him. It was a remarkable moment.

I smiled all the way home, thinking about the goodness that lies within all of us, the kindness that we can offer to others and even sometimes do. But if it exists at all, it must be unreachable for Donald. His employees and the contractors that built those casinos were the “others” I mentioned above. They are the ones who were not paid for work completed, who lost their jobs, their retirement savings, and the money he pushed them to invest in the companies’ stock that tanked along with the companies’ value.

Donald bragged in an interview in 2016, “Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me. The money I took out of there was incredible.” Yes, Donald managed to manipulate our laws to come out financially on top, no matter how many people he took down to get there. It’s just business, right? So says the unscrupulous, fraudulent, self-serving businessman.

And, according to Donald, it’s just business when it comes to defending and supporting our allies. NATO was formed in 1949 to create “a pact of mutual assistance to counter the risk that the Soviet Union would seek to extend its control” beyond its territory at the time. Article 5 of the Treaty says that if one member is attacked, it will be viewed as an attack on all NATO members.

Here’s a question for you — how many times has Article 5 been invoked? Well, the answer to that is, just once. And that was the day after 9/11 in 2001 when this country was attacked by international terrorists. Not one member nation asked if we’d been paying the proper amount into our defense budget. They all pitched in to defend us.

But now our NATO allies are unsure if we would do the same for them in a similar situation, and can you blame them? If Donald Trump regains the presidency in November, it will be all about business, his kind of business, of course. Not the defense of our allies, nor the needs of our people, nor the maintenance of our democracy, and certainly not the rule of law.

Humans have the potential to feel compassion, to care for others, to share what we have with those in need. How can we allow a man who demonstrates daily his utter lack of any simple human compassion to return to the White House where he will hold enormous power over decisions that will affect us all? And not just here in our country, but across the world.

Donald has promised to be a dictator on day one of his second term as president and we should believe him. It’s up to us to do all we can to stop that from happening.

Karen Gardner, of Haydenville, can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.