Call him Daddy

Sitting next to Donald Trump at the end of a short NATO summit, Mark Rutte, head of the organization, looked quite amused as he listened to the President describe the Israel-Iran conflict. 

“They’ve had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard,” Trump said. “You know, they fight like hell, you can’t stop them. Let them fight for about two to three minutes, then it’s easy to stop them.”

Raising a fist, Rutte added: “And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get (them to) stop.”

Soon after, flanked by two of his Apprentices, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, Daddy Trump gave his own press conference. He talked for 15 minutes before he took a single question.

The Netherlands, he said, “has the most beautiful trees. I want to bring some back with me.” There might be some problems getting Dutch trees through customs, but maybe we can carve out a tariff exemption. Trump spent the night in the Dutch Royal Palace, where he slept “very well,” and then breakfasted with the King and Queen, “beautiful people” out of “central casting,” with a “big, beautiful heart.”

And now, the news. The US military strike on Iran was “very, very successful,” Trump said. “It was called obliteration. No other nation on Earth could have done it, and now this incredible exercise in American strength has led to peace. We call it the 12 DAY WAR. I spoke to a few people and it just sounded like the right name. We think it’s over. I don’t think they’re going to be back.”

With the Middle East situation now fully settled, Trump discussed the most important development of the day, The Hague Defense Commitment, which doesn’t have the same ring as the 12 DAY WAR, but is still “pretty good, pretty appropriate” as names go. He’s secured a commitment from NATO members to provide five percent of their Gross Domestic Product toward self-defense, which takes a lot of the NATO funding burden off the US’s shoulders. “This is a big win for Europe and, for, actually, Western Civilization,” Trump said. “For years, past administrations failed to get most allies to contribute even two percent.”

Then, Trump’s mental gymnastics flipped back to the bombing of Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, which happened on a “moonless” night, he said, poetically. In a uniquely Trumpian way, he described the utter violence of the moment while also slipping in some lightly acrid press criticism.

“Our great pilots were demeaned by fake news CNN, which is back there, by the way, believe it or not, wasting time. Nobody’s watching them, so they’re just wasting time. My time. The New York Times put out a story saying, they were hit, but it wasn’t that bad. Well, it was so bad, that it ended the war. Somebody said that it was so devastating, if you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, that ended the war. This ended the war, too, but in a different way, it was so devastating.”

He also referred to Secretary of Defense Hegseth as the “Secretary of War.” “It used to be called that. Maybe we’ll call it that for a couple of weeks. Because we feel like warriors.” This warriorship literally happened over the weekend, but maybe it’s better not to mention that while the President is speaking.

Finally, Trump asked if there were any questions. Every hand in the room shot up. “Wow,” he said. “That’s a lot of questions.”

Most of the questions led to Trump circling back to the amazing qualities of America’s planes and submarines, but they also yielded some good tidbits. A question about Vladimir Putin produced this quintessentially Trumpian paragraph: “Putin called me the other day and said ‘Can I help you with Iran?’ I said, ‘no, you can help me with Russia.’ You know, in the last few weeks, we took care of India and Pakistan, Kosovo and Serbia. On Friday we have the Congo coming in, and Rwanda, that was a vicious war that went on, a machete war. Heads chopped off all over Africa. We did two others in addition to that. No one’s ever done anything like this. I consider Putin a person that’s been misguided. I’m very surprised. I’ve settled four of ‘em in the meantime.”

Blessed be the peacemaker. We also learned, after a nervous question from a young Finnish reporter, that the Prime Minister of Finland, Petteri Orpo, is a “very good golfer,” and that Trump is trying to buy a used icebreaker from him at a third of the asking price. “I did it without the approval of Congress, they’ll probably impeach me for it,” he said. “We’re trying to make a good deal. That’s all I do, my whole life. I try to make deals.”

Finally came this question from Deborah Haynes of the relatively Trump-friendly British outlet Sky News: “Mark Rutte, who is the head of the UN. He called you Daddy earlier. Do you regard your NATO allies as kind of children?”

Trump: “No, he likes me. I think he likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll come back and I’ll let you know. I’ll hit him hard OK? He did it very affectionately. Daddy. You’re my Daddy.”

Haynes: “Do you regard your NATO allies as kind of like children? And they’re obviously listening to you, and they’re spending more, and they’re appreciative of that. But do you think they’re going to be able to defend Europe on their own?”

Trump: “I think they need help a little bit at the beginning. But I think they’re going to remember this day. This is a big day for NATO. One of the gentlemen said, you know what, we’ve been trying to raise the rate for 30 years, 20 years, from almost the beginning. It’s been an amazing day. For a lot of reasons.”

And with that, Daddy had to go back to work. Thank you for your attention to this matter.