NATO Chief Asked If He Still Views Trump as ‘Daddy’ While US Looks to Pull Out of Alliance

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte took questions at the Reagan Institute’s Center for Peace Through Strength on Thursday, where he was asked about his infamous quote calling President Donald Trump “daddy.”

In June 2025, Rutte raised eyebrows when he used the moniker after Trump lashed out at a post-ceasefire Iranian strike, saying, “They don’t know what the fuck they’re doing!”

“Sometimes, daddy has to use strong words,” Rutte said while sitting beside Trump at a presser during the NATO Summit in Europe.

Trump seized on the sobriquet, joking to Politico journalist Dasha Burns months later, “NATO calls me daddy!”

At Thursday’s event, a reporter asked, “In the conversation with the president yesterday, do you think he is still going to stay in NATO, since you know him so well? And second of all, do you still consider him ‘daddy’ after yesterday?”

Trump met with Rutte at the White House on Wednesday, following the president’s harsh assessment of NATO as a “paper tiger” that didn’t help when the U.S. asked them to in the Strait of Hormuz.

“On the daddy thing, this is a language problem I have to explain to you. It follows me a little bit, I can assure you,” Rutte said with a chuckle.

He continued:

We had a sort of pre-summit meeting, the president and I, in June in the Hague, and he had been very angry that day with Iran and with Israel. This was in June last year. And in Dutch you would say, hey — the translation of your father is “daddy” — and I would say, I said, “Hey, sometimes daddy has to be angry.”

So, I was not calling him my daddy. But of course, “daddy” has also a special connotation, and I now have to live with this the rest of my life! And I own it and the president owns it because he brought out T-shirts. He made a movie, “Daddy’s Home.” It is so funny. This is part of why I like him so much. We make mistakes, and this is when you are not a native speaker. Sorry for that.

Rutte said this week’s conversation with Trump “was really open, was really between friends, but it was really also, clearly, about his disappointment.”

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

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