‘Orchestrated grovel’: critics react to Europe’s attempts to tame Donald Trump
Nato chief Mark Rutte derided for calling US president ‘daddy’ and showering him with praise over Iran
History may record this week as the one in which Donald Trump came to Europe to discuss defence spending.
Diplomats may remember it as the week in which the art of obsequiousness reached new highs and the sycophants plunged new lows.
All in the name of taming the president. It seems to have worked.
After Trump landed to Washington from this week’s Nato summit in The Hague, the White House posted a video that made clear how his team felt the trip had gone.
The summit had concluded on Wednesday with a joint press conference in which Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, after showering the US president with compliments over his actions on Iran, bizarrely referred to him as “daddy”.
Rutte was now being widely derided for the summit’s “orchestrated grovel”and attempting to row back on his choice of language. In Washington, however, Team Trump were enjoying themselves.
“Daddy’s home!” trilled the video, which mixed clips of Trump’s handshakes with world leaders with footage of crowds awaiting his motorcade, soundtracked by a 2010 song by Usher: “And I know you’ve been waiting for this loving all day …”
The tone of Rutte’s public bootlicking had been muted compared with the text messages he had sent to “dear Donald” before the summit – “Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, it was truly extraordinary … you will achieve something NO president in decades could get done” – and which the president had immediately leaked. “I think he likes me,” smirked Trump later, while his cabinet giggled behind him.
The pathetic fawning, boot licking grovelling by NATO made a mockery of their own mana.
Trump wants cowering or flattery.
We should give him neither!
Aside from the rampant racism, transphobia, sexism, anti-intellectualism and hatred for anyone poor, liberal media despise Trump because deep down in places they never like to admit at their plush dinner parties, Trump truly represents what America is.
A shallow narcissist culture looking for its next selfish ego stroke paranoidly armed to the teeth with enough corporate weapons to destroy the planet many times over
That’s fine when you are the host of a reality TV show, it’s terrifying when that person leads a nuclear armed country.
Trump is the ultimate resentment politician. He understands how it feels to be looked down upon by his peers who have laughed at his achievements. His overcompensation resonates with every white working poor American who have perceived their culture and their values belittled for cosmopolitan pretensions while economically robbing them of any resilience.
Trump’s revenge fantasies against every imagined slight ignites those voters own resentments while also becoming a flare to attract white supremacists and Nazi sympathisers.
That’s what politics, thanks to social media hate algorithms, has degenerated into, “I’m hurting, but you are hurting more”.
Trump wants the world to cower before him.
He wants the threat of American aggression to gain him power and submission.
Threatening friends and allies is not what friends or allies do.
That is what a vile and selfish narcissist on an ego trip does.
That is what a toxic bully does.
We should not cower to Trump.
We should boycott America, shun America, and work with everyone who isn’t America for the next 4 years to see if American Democracy can rebalance itself.
We should not cower before an Orange fascist.
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Sad bunch of arse lickers those wannabe leaders .Its europe they are meant to be defending not trumps ego .
Then we have our deluded egg head strutting around as though he is the main show in town blabbering shit hard out .He talks about the need to increase spending knowing full well we will never spend the 20 billion a year to get to his masters 5% of GDP .
A sprat in a shark tank is what NZ really is in the scale of the world .
Trump has had his 15 minutes of glory and now he’s back emboldened and threatening Canada on trade again. As the focus swings back to tariffs after his 90 day reprieve expect the chaos to restart. Unlikely to end well regardless of Bob’s opinion.
They know who their boss is – the US led by the orange king. NATO, nothing more than an extension of US power…and we all got show of their subservience to US power here. We’d be no different. The entire West, under the thumb of Yankee Doodle Donald. Thankfully for Donnie, most people still believe the West to be the good guys, despite the orange ruffian.
I prefer to interpret the “flattery” as mockery.
Trump being the only one not in on the joke.
With you there Richard Christie. I also thought tongues were firmly in cheeks and it is a massive piss take of the ol’ Narcissist in Chief.
I mean Melania’s not going to massage his fragile ego is she?
Trump is a despicable person but he was elected as President of America in a fair election so he needs to be treated in a civil way and with diplomacy. It is called the art of the board room which is where you learn to weigh up the strengths and weakness of those you deal with .. Trump is a bully which he sees as a strength but it can be his downfall as he seems to believe his lies which can leave him floundering when the true comes out.
Hopefully Americans see his faults in the next year and vote Democrats into power to make him unable to operate .If that happened he would become likely to overstep his powers and be brought down
Watching the EU / NATO leaders is like watching The Bunker all over again.
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