NATO’s secretary general has offered an explanation about why he seemingly called Donald Trump ‘daddy’.
Mark Rutte sparked a wave of online reaction after an exchange with Donald Trump around the time of the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, where leaders met to discuss security, the alliance’s future, and other international issues.
Much of the attention, however, centred on Rutte’s wording about the U.S. president, which left many wondering what he meant.
Months later, Rutte met Trump again at the White House this week, amid reports Trump had floated the idea of stepping away from the military alliance. Asked directly why he calls Trump ‘daddy’, Rutte told reporters it was simply a ‘language problem’.
He explained: “In Dutch, you would say – the translation of your father is daddy – and i said, ‘sometimes daddy has to be angry.
“So I was not calling him my daddy. But of course, daddy has all sorts of special connotations, and now I have to live with it for the rest of my life.”
He also said that he and the president have effectively embraced the moment.
The original remark followed a discussion last year about the Iran-Israel ceasefire in June, when both leaders were questioned on the situation.
“They’ve had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard,” Trump said at the time, via Sky News. “You know, they fight like hell. You can’t stop it. Let them fight for about two, three minutes, then it’s easy to stop them.”
Rutte then added: “And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get it stopped.”
Rutte later stressed that he wasn’t personally assigning Trump the nickname.
“The ‘daddy’ thing, I didn’t call him daddy,” he said. “What I said is that sometimes in Europe, I hear sometimes countries saying, ‘Hey Mark, will the US stay with us?’ And I said, that sounds a little bit like a small child asking his daddy, ‘Are you still staying with the family?'”
Rutte concluded, Mail Online reports: “So in that sense I was using ‘daddy’ not that I was calling President Trump ‘daddy’.”
After Wednesday’s meeting (April 9), Trump also voiced renewed complaints related to NATO and Greenland, arguing that allies had not backed the U.S. during the Iran conflict.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social after the private sit-down, the he said: “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN.”