NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is so unwilling to discuss whether President Donald Trump is going to leave the alliance that he would rather return to his unfortunate comment from months ago, when he referred to the president as “daddy.”
Rutte was speaking at the Reagan Institute on Thursday, following his White House meeting the previous day, when a reporter asked him if Trump indicated whether he would stay in NATO — as well as if he would continue to call him “daddy” if he exits the alliance.
“On the ‘daddy thing,’ this is a language problem,” Rutte immediately jumped to explain. “I have to explain to you because it follows me a little bit, I can assure you.”
WHO HAS BEEN KILLED SO FAR DURING THE IRAN WAR?
Rutte made headlines in June of last year when he reacted to Trump’s comment that Israel and Iran were “two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.”
He compared Israel and Iran to “two kids in a schoolyard” and Trump to a father figure, joking that “sometimes daddy needs to use strong language.”
The press immediately seized on the bizarre choice of words, and soon the president was sharing in the joke when he said at a press conference: “I think [Rutte] likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll let you know, and I’ll hit him hard. He did it very affectionately — ‘Daddy, you’re my daddy.’”
The NATO secretary-general told the reporters at the Reagan Institute that he meant to evoke the image of a stern father and mentally translated the term to “daddy,” not understanding at the time that the word had “also has a special connotation.”
“And the president owns it, because he brought out T-shirts, he made a movie — ‘Daddy is Home’ — when he returned to the United States. It was so funny, and this is why I like him so much,” Rutte said.
“Now I have to live with this the rest of my life,” he added, laughing. “But you make mistakes when you’re not a native speaker.”
Immediately switching to a serious and quieter demeanor, he brushed past the more pressing of the reporter’s two questions.
“The conversation was really open, it was really between friends, but it was also really clear — his disappointment,” Rutte quickly summarized.
The NATO secretary has been doing clean-up work in Washington after Trump signaled such anger with European unwillingness to help against Iran that he might exit the alliance altogether.
Rutte told CNN after the meeting that he was “able to point him to the fact that the large majority of European nations have been helpful” and have “widespread support” for the U.S., “degrading the nuclear and ballistic missile capacity” in the Islamic Republic.
TRUMP RIPS INTO NATO AFTER RUTTE MEETING, CALLS GREENLAND ‘POORLY RUN PIECE OF ICE’
That argument does not seem to have appeased the president, who wrote not long after the meeting: “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN.”
Rutte has been asked directly multiple times whether Trump indicated intentions to leave NATO, but has consistently dodged the question.