During a meeting with NATO leaders Thursday, President Donald Trump reportedly said that if the major allies did not meet the 2 percent of GDP defense spending target by January 2019, the U.S. “would go it alone.”

He also reportedly said that if the accelerated target – which was originally agreed for 2024 – is not honored the US would “do our own thing,” sources told the New York Times and Washington Post.

Multiple sources in the room reached by ABC News did not deny that the president made those comments but said that they were not taken as a threat to pull out of the alliance.

“That is not what we understood or retained from the declarations of President Trump at the NATO summit. The heart of Trump’s message was positive,” a French source told ABC.