The White House leaned into the “Daddy” title for President Trump after the NATO secretary general used the term to refer to the president during their news conference early Wednesday.
The administration released a video on the social media platform X late Wednesday, including highlights of the president’s trip to the two-day NATO summit in Netherlands.
The video was set to the song “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home)” by Usher, released in 2010.
“Daddy’s home… Hey, hey, hey, Daddy,” the White House wrote in the caption of the video, which included musical notes at the start of the text.
The video comes shortly after NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte joined Trump for a bilateral news conference in the Netherlands earlier this week, where he addressed Trump’s assertion that Israel and Iran “don’t know what the f— they’re doing.”
Trump’s Tuesday remarks came amid early indications that both sides had violated terms of a ceasefire, but the deal seems to have withstood those initial hiccups.
“Daddy has to sometimes use strong language,” Rutte said at the press conference.
Rutte later sought to clarify the eyebrow-raising comment, saying he used the term in jest.
“The daddy thing, I didn’t call him ‘daddy,’” Rutte told reporters later in the day.
“What I said is that sometimes, in Europe, I hear sometimes countries saying, ‘Hey, Mark, will the U.S. stay with us?’ And I said that sounds a little bit like a small child asking his daddy, ‘Hey, are you still staying with the family?’ So in that sense, I used ‘daddy’ — not that I was calling President Trump daddy,” Rutte continued.
Trump laughed off the remark during a later news conference.
“He did it very affectionately though, ‘Daddy, you’re my daddy,’” Trump said, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio chuckled behind him.