Donald Trump loves to give nicknames. To himself (Honest Don, A Very Stable Genius, The King). To others (Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, Gavin Newscum).
Now he seems happy to take one: “Daddy.”
The White House posted a video Wednesday night showing the U.S. President attending the NATO summit this week to the soundtrack of R&B singer Usher’s 2010 song “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home).”
The post was in apparent reference to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte appearing to call Trump “daddy” on Wednesday when asked about Trump’s expletive-laced rebuke of Israel and Iran after the two countries risked upending a fragile ceasefire he had just helped broker.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f-ck they’re doing,” Trump said Tuesday as he left the White House for The Hague.
“Daddy has to sometimes use strong language,” Rutte said, sitting beside Trump at the summit.
Rutte earlier lauded Trump, according to text messages Trump posted to his Truth Social platform, for authorizing strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran over the weekend.
When asked Wednesday about Rutte calling him “daddy,” Trump said: “He likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll let you know, I’ll come back, and I’ll hit him hard.”
“He did it very affectionately, ‘Daddy, you’re my daddy,’” Trump imitated.
Rutte later tried to clarify that he did not mean to call Trump “daddy” but rather to liken Trump’s relationship to Europe to that of a father figure. “What I said is that sometimes, in Europe, I hear sometimes countries saying, ‘Hey, Mark, will the U.S. stay with us?’ And I said that sounds a little bit like a small child asking his daddy, ‘Hey, are you still staying with the family?’”
It’s not the first time Trump’s been called daddy, and he seems to like it.
In a 2023 interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, golfer John Daly said he and fellow golfers “want Daddy Trump back.” Trump posted about the reference on Truth Social at the time and again a few months later. Daly has said he’s called Trump “daddy” since the two met in 1992.
Carlson also once compared Trump to a father figure at an October 2024 rally when he likened some of the American public to a “hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter” who’s been allowed to “slam the door and give you the finger.”“There has to be a point at which Dad comes home,” Carlson said. “And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.’”
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