Mark Rutte recently gave in de Volkskrant a major interview, especially dedicated to the blessings with which Donald Trump continues to delight the world. “We can be grateful to Trump for his leadership,” it said.
“I like him and have enjoyed working with him as prime minister,” Rutte says. And later: “I am again, yes sorry, very positive about what Trump has done. He has opened the lines to Putin and is absolutely not naive about him, I can assure you.” Finally: “I would say: thanks to Trump and the response that Europe and Canada have given to that call to action, that alliance is stronger than ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall. That is really my belief. Trump plays a crucial role in this and that is why I defend him. And the style in which I do that? Yes, people may think all kinds of things about that.”
Everyone understands that Rutte, as Secretary General of NATO, will not just kneel on the President of the United States in such an interview. “I sometimes think: Donald, fuck youstop with that nonsense!” Donald would immediately leave NATO, torpedo some fishing boats near Scheveningen, put Wilders in power and take over Greenland in one go. And who will be blamed? Rutte of course. He knows how that works in politics.
Not a day goes by without the United States being discredited
So understand the cautious way in which Rutte tries to calm the big, roaring child from Washington. My only objection is that he is gradually going way too far in this. This way you will not keep the child quiet. Every now and then you have to hear: “And now it’s enough.”
Even if it only happens with a big stab under water, as EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas did when she wrote: “The free world needs a new leader.”
It must have sounded like a curse to Rutte’s ears: you cannot brusque Trump like this. Rutte prefers to do the opposite, which is why he is also called Trump’s heeler. But it goes much further than the heel: Rutte licks Trump up to the top of his head. In fact, we should be grateful to him for wanting to guide us.
Rutte is a smart, well-informed man. He needs to know what is going on in the US itself. That the country is sliding into an autocracy in which the judiciary and the media are intimidated, dissident civil servants are replaced en masse by yes-men, and residents are arrested and deported without trial.
Not a day goes by without the United States being discredited. The NRC of Tuesday, two typical headlines: ‘CBS editor-in-chief cancels broadcast on deportations’ and ‘Do the member states continue to believe in the ICC (International Criminal Court) or do they give in to Trump’s intimidation?’
NRC conducted an interview with Cas Mudde, a political scientist who has lived and worked in the US for seventeen years. “The Trump administration is conducting an authoritarian coup,” he said. He is afraid that he will be arrested if one of his students secretly passes on his opinions.
With his praise, Rutte normalizes all those developments initiated by Trump. Trump will, and rightly so, experience it as encouragement.
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