Outgoing Prime Minister Dick Schoof is sitting next to US President Donald Trump, on Wednesday afternoon in a room at the NATO summit. Behind Trump is the Dutch flag, behind the American. The fact that Trump came to The Hague is a relief for just about all other NATO government leaders. And certainly also for Schoof, Prime Minister of the host country. The Netherlands had done everything to make the Trump happy for days. The president was allowed to stay in the Woonpaleis of Willem-Alexander and Máxima, Huis ten Bosch. Without Trump the top would have failed, with Trump they have all agreed to spend a lot more on Defense.
After the meeting in the Great Hall, his sheaf and Trump sat down separately. A group of American and Dutch journalists can be in the last minutes of their conversation. Thanks Trump and calls the “great successes” achieved on the top, and Trump praises the Netherlands and also the prime minister of the Netherlands: he thought the top was great, and also his stay in the palace.
Then the journalists have to leave. But Trump keeps talking to them. About the reporting of The New York Times And CNN: that last week’s American bombing on Iran the nuclear installations there would not have damaged as heavily as intended. Trump calls them “Fake Media”, according to him, the journalists are “Disgusting and Really Horrible Groups of People“.
Siling is next to it and says nothing.
In the press conference thereafter, for Dutch journalists, Trump does contradict something else. Earlier that day, Trump and PVV leader Geert Wilders met each other, in the field of the NATO summit, and Trump said that the Dutch cabinet had arranged it for him. “Apparently I have to speak with the opposition leader when I also speak to the prime minister.” Trump himself thought, he said, a bit weird.
But Schoof says that the cabinet has nothing to do with it.
On questions about the American journalists who were scolded by Trump, Schoof wants to “not comment.” He says he doesn’t know “who is right and who is not.”
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In return for NRC Says Schoof at the beginning of the evening, in a telephone conversation: “For me it is the most important thing that I would never do that. As a prime minister, I never commented on any message in the past year. And look that Trump makes statements about it: I see that he is all kinds of discussions in America with the American media, and I don’t want to mix in that.”
You know, you say, not who is right. But what do you do that he will rage against media?
“If I say that I would never do it, then I think that is a qualifying statement. I would never deal with the press that way, and that’s what it is all about for me. I will not let myself go in such a way.”
So you think you should not be so out of media?
“No, I say that I don’t do it. That is my way of dealing with the media.”
Is it complicated for you to say something normative about it, if a world leader besides you talks about media like that?
“For me, freedom of press is above water, that is the reality in which I want to function. I never care what medium it is, whether they are serious conversations or non-serious conversations. What Trump says is about the American context and I do not get involved with it.”
Schoof says he wants to “really like” about the NATO summit himself. “Two days that are incredibly important for the unity and mutual cooperation of NATO.” He is “extremely satisfied” that that unity has been preserved.
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To get that done, Trump was pampered by the Netherlands. In the US he takes one measure after the other against democracy and the rule of law. Does that inconvenience evoke?
“I think it is important that we are dealing with respect with respect, certainly in our alliance. NATO is based on important values: freedom, democracy and the rule of law. The US is responsible for more than half of the financing of NATO and is the only one capable of, for eighty years, for eighty years, with nuclearly the freedom in Europe and Vrediten Vrediten, the honorability and peacefulness happens, erability and peacefulness, and peacefulness and peace, and peacefulness, and very. Seeing the military structure in Russia, we have now taken a lot of worries with 32 countries.
Secretary-General Mark Rutte calls Trump ‘a man of peace’. Do you also see Trump like that?
“In any case, he focused on a ceasefire between Israel and Iran and that enforced and with that he could be an important engine for sustainable peace. In my conversation with him I also noticed that he really wants to focus on a ceasefire in Ukraine, and that he thinks that he should go into movement without conditions. And Pakistan.
That sounds like you think Trump is also a man of peace. Pakistan has nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Peace. Good idea?
“Those are all of those questions .. I am not going to give an answer to that. I think he can play a decisive role and where he does, we have to pick up the ball together to ensure that we can get peace. The Dutch position is always that diplomacy is the way for that. And at the same time we have to take care of our defense in NATO. the peace. “
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