‘My English is not good enough’: Mark Rutte explains why he calls Trump ‘dad’, says ‘I accept it’

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte finally explains the real reason for his call Donald Trump “Dad” – and said that’s not what a lot of people think. In an interview with Politico, Rutte insisted that the remark was “by no means intentional,” attributing it (in otherwise fluent English) to what he called his “inadequate command of the English language” while firmly rejecting any suggestion of personal subtext. Rutte, who described Trump as a “funny guy” with a “full of sense of humour”, acknowledged that the nickname has since taken on a life of its own, adding with a shrug: “I accept it.”“We had a NATO summit in Iraq, and President Donald Trump and I had a meeting before, and it was a media coverage. It was the morning after he destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities. I was very happy about that. I commend him for doing that with B2. He was also having some disputes with the Israelites at the time. Then I said, it’s because I don’t know enough English,” Rutte said. “I said, yes, dads have to be tough sometimes. Of course, then realizing that the word dad has a lot of meanings, and then what he did, it’s a credit to him because he was a funny guy, he had a lot of sense of humor. The American side then put that on T-shirts. When he came back from the Hague summit there was a video where he said, dad is at home. So it was just born, it was never meant to be. But I carry it with me now and live with it. This is true. Now he’s a dad. I think you can take a little bit of ownership over dad. Well, I’ll take that advice,” he added. Trump has said many times in the past that Rutte calls him “dad.”“Until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me,” Trump said in a speech in Davos. “They called me daddy, right, one last time,” he said.In fact, Rutte did call him “dad” last year.