The Secretary General of NATO was full of effusive praise on Tuesday morning, apparent direct messages published by U.S. President Donald Trump appear to show.
President Donald Trump is flying to the NATO summit in The Hague in the Netherlands on Tuesday and is due to attend a Royal dinner and stay tonight as the personal guest of the King of the Netherlands at his palace. Evidently the President is anticipating a successful summit too, with plans for almost all NATO members to agree to work towards increasing their defence spending from a minimum of two per cent to five per cent in the coming years.
Seeing other NATO partners like Canada and the European states take on more responsibility for joint defence so the burden is more fairly shared with the United States has been a key ambition for President Trump going back to his first administration. He was credited with boosting progress towards two per cent then and will hail a victory with rectifying that floor upwards again now.
While in the air aboard Air Force One, President Trump published a text message chain that purported to have freshly arrived from the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, which was effusive with praise for Trump having twisted arms in Europe to boost defence spending. Rutte allegedly said: “You are flying into another big success in The Hague this evening. It was notg easy but we’ve got them all signed onto [five per cent].”
Making clear this was Trump’s doing, the Rutte message continued: “Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world. You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done. Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win”.
Although Rutte has publicly stated he wants to keep discussion of Iran out of the NATO summit, as this isn’t an alliance issue and would be a “deviation” from the main issues at hand, Rutte also praised President Trump for his handling of the 12 day war. The Rutte message stated of Trump’s “decisive” actions on Iran that it was: “truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do. It makes us all safer”.
Mark Rutte was, until last year, the long-serving Prime Minister of the Netherlands. When his coalition government collapsed over its handling of the migration issue he displayed that essential talent for top-flight globalist politicians and fell upwards into the NATO chief role.
Cited as a major factor for his selection was the then-approaching 2024 U.S. Presidential elections and the possibility of President Trump being elected again, and Rutte’s reputation by that point amid European leaders as a “Trump whisperer“.
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