I rarely saw that live broadcasted press conference of Donald Trump after the NATO summit: I have rarely seen a fascinating hour of television. Everything that has made him infamous was in it: his uncontrollable cobblestone, his hatred against part of the press (CNN and The New York Times), his revenge (here against Spain), his unreliability in the evaluation of events (the effects of the bombing in Iran).
The discussions afterwards on the Dutch TV mainly focused on the question: Has Mark Rutte not too much syrup to mouth shut, was he not dropped by ‘a moral lower limit’? My attitude is more opportunistic: if you can achieve an important and useful goal with flattery, you should not resist.
Ruttes critics also forget that you have to consider Trump as a big child – and treat it accordingly. He wants to be pampered, he has to get his way in everything and if that doesn’t happen fast enough, he starts stamping and screaming. Anyone who has had such a big child – I don’t fortunately – know that you shouldn’t give it his way in everything. But in the case of Trump, great caution is required, because he happens to be the most powerful big child in the world.
That is why Rutte resorted to the Firma Mijm & Stroop. And see: it worked. Trump himself said at that press conference that during the flight to the Netherlands he had actually intended “something else” – which remained exactly unclear, as often with him – but that he had changed his mind when he had seen all those sweet heads of heads of state in The Hague. They wanted to protect their country, he had noticed. And who did they need that? It!
Well, he wasn’t the worst, so why wouldn’t he help those stumpers if they wanted to pay for it?
In the meantime, he would pay for himself with the bastards that continued to be on the sidelines. CNN, The New York Times and Spain, which did not want to cooperate in the 5 percent standard: he liked them raw. Inaccurate bombing? “Who says that? A leak of the intelligence service? It is a shame that our courageous pilots …. and Spain? We have a trading deal with them, we now let them pay twice as much.”
Anyone who has also learned his lesson as a parent of this big child is Zensky. “He is nice, nicer than ever,” Trump muttered. They had once had an annoying fight, but now everything was forgiven and forgotten. Zensky had a hard time, he now also wanted to get rid of that war, Trump noted. He would talk about it again with Putin.
Then the most remarkable moment of the press conference started. Myoslava Petsa, a reporter from the BBC, asked him if he could help Ukraine more in the air defense. He listened attentively and asked her if her husband was a soldier there. That turned out to be the case. “I can see that it does you a lot,” said Trump. He would check whether there were any patriots available, America herself and Israel they also needed.
I had never seen this empathic side of Trump. Rutte maybe? It could explain why he has been friends with him for ten years.