'My insufficient command of English': Mark Rutte explains why he called Trump ‘daddy,' says 'I am living with it'

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has finally explained the real reason he called Donald Trump “Daddy” — and says it’s not what many people think.

In an interview with Politico, Rutte insisted the remark was “never intentional,” attributing it — in otherwise fluent English — to what he called his “insufficient command of the English language,” while firmly dismissing any suggestion of personal subtext.




Describing Trump as a “fun guy” with “a lot of humor,” Rutte acknowledged that the nickname has since taken on a life of its own, adding with a shrug: “I’m living with it.”

"We had the NATO summit in Iraq and Donald Trump, the president, and I had a meeting before, and it was a press play. And that was exactly on the morning after the day where he took out the nuclear facilities in Iran. And I was very happy with that. And I complimented him with doing that through the B2s. And it was when he was also having some arguments with the Israelis. And then I said, and here is my insufficient command of the English language," Rutte said.



"I said, yeah, Daddy sometimes has to be tough. And of course, later realizing that the word daddy has a lot of connotations, then what he did, and this is to his credit, because he is a fun guy and he has a lot of humor. The American side then put this on T shirts. There was a video when he came back from the D. Hague summit where he said, daddy is home. So there it was born and it was never intentioned. But again, I'm now carrying it, living with it. It's a fact. Now he's Daddy. I think you could take some ownership of Daddy just a little bit. Okay, I'll take that advice," he added.

Trump, in the past, had repeatedly said that Rutte called him "Daddy."

At the Davos speech, Trump said, "Until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me," he said."They called me daddy, right, the last time."

Factually, Last year, Rutte did called him "Daddy."