NATO Chief Calls Trump 'Daddy' for Cursing Out Israel and Iran Ahead of 2025 Summit
President Donald Trump was praised as the star of the 2025 NATO summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, June 25
Sitting down with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump spoke about his efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, including dropping an F-bomb to reporters out of anger when there was a setback
"Daddy has to sometimes use strong language," Rutte said of Trump's tacticsDays after reportedly brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, President Donald Trump was lauded as the star of the 2025 NATO summit.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte heaped praise on the president when the two sat down ahead of the summit with world leaders in The Hague, Netherlands. Rutte asked Trump about his strong statement the day prior, in which he condemned Israel and Iran for continuing to bomb one another following the announcement of the ceasefire, saying the countries "don't know what the f--- they're doing."
"They've had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard," Trump told Rutte. "You know, they fight like hell, you can't stop them. Let them fight for about 2-3 minutes, then it's easy to stop them."
"And then daddy has to sometimes use strong language to [get them to] stop," Rutte said.
When pressed by reporters about his flattery of the U.S. president, who ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend, Rutte called it "a question of taste."
"When it comes to Iran, the fact that he took this decisive action, very targeted, to make sure that Iran would not be able to get his hands on a nuclear capability — I think he deserves all the praise," Rutte insisted, calling Trump "a good friend."
Trump himself also wasn't shy about taking credit as a world mediator, invoking the memory of the United States' nuclear bombing of Japan to end World War II when asked about his actions against Iran.
"I don't want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don't want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war. This ended the war," he told reporters on Wednesday.
Trump has been floating the idea of wanting a Nobel Peace Prize in recent weeks, claiming days ago that he deserves at least "four or five" of them.
While Trump has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. bombings of Iran on June 21 decimated the country's nuclear program, multiple outlets obtained a classified report this week that revealed the damage may have been much less severe.
The New York Times reported on Monday that intelligence officials believe the bombing of the three nuclear sites "sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings."
"The early findings conclude that the strikes over the weekend set back Iran's nuclear program by only a few months," they said.
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Trump was asked about those reports at the NATO summit, where he called the early intelligence "very inconclusive."
"The intelligence says, 'We don't know, it could have been very severe.' That's what the intelligence says. So I guess that's correct, but I think we can take the 'we don't know.' It was very severe. It was obliteration," he added.
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