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The White House has welcomed President Donald Trump back from Wednesday’s NATO summit in the Netherlands with a cringe-inducing social media video set to the 2010 song “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home)” by Usher.
The clip, a montage of Trump stepping out of Air Force One back on American soil followed by choice scenes from the summit, is a reference to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte jokingly nicknaming the president “daddy” during their sitdown yesterday.
The pair had been discussing the Israel-Iran conflict and the swift collapse of the ceasefire Trump had hailed as marking the end of the “12 Day War” after the two sides accused each other of violating its terms.
“They’ve had it,” Trump said. “They’ve got a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. You know, they fight like hell. You can’t stop them, let them fight for two, three minutes, then it’s easier to stop them…”
Rutte interjected: “And then daddy has to, sometimes, use strong language.”
The Dutchman was referring to the president’s comments on the White House South Lawn a day earlier, when he had angrily told the press that neither Israel nor Iran “knows what the f*** they’re doing.”
Trump responded by chuckling and adding: “Strong language, yeah, every once and a while.”
The president was later asked about the nickname and whether it implied he saw other countries as “children,” causing Secretary of State Marco Rubio, standing behind him, to crack up uncontrollably.
“He likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll let you know, I’ll come back, and I’ll hit him hard,” Trump responded. “He did it very affectionately. ‘Daddy, you’re my daddy.’”
Rutte later clarified that he was trying to compare the president’s relationship with Europe to that of a father with his family.
“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?’”
This is not the first time the billionaire real estate tycoon and father of five has been referred to as “daddy”.
In the final weeks of last year’s presidential race, conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, with whom Trump has recently fallen out over the Iran intervention, gave an incredibly disturbing address on the Republican’s behalf at a rally in Duluth, Georgia, in which he likened the United States to a “bad little girl” in need of a “vigorous spanking.”
“There has to be a point at which dad comes home,” Carlson told his audience, referring to Trump.
“Yeah, that’s right. Dad comes home. And he’s p***ed. Dad is p***ed. 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. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl. And it has to be this way.’”
MSNBC analyst Chris Hayes reacted to Carlson’s creepy analogy by observing: “The Republican Party is now very much explicitly running on a campaign of male dominion. Trump’s your daddy.”
