US President Donald Trump (R), German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (L,up), NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (L) and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (R, up) gather for a family photo before a plenary session of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Heads of State and Government summit in The Hague, on June 25, 2025.
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NATO made history this week, agreeing to a massive hike in defense spending at its annual summit on Wednesday — but it was the “bromance” between President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte that stole the spotlight.
Rutte appeared to fawn over the U.S. president numerous times on Wednesday, both before and after the alliance issued its joint declaration announcing a defense spending hike to 5% of individual members’ GDPs by 2035. Rutte said Trump “deserves all the praise” for getting allies to invest more in security after years of pressure.
“This would not have happened if you would not have been elected in 2016 and re-elected last year … so I want to thank you,” Rutte told Trump at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, further lauding the president as a “man of strength … and peace” and praising his “decisive” intervention in the Iran-Israel conflict.
As Trump compared the Middle Eastern adversaries to “two kids in a school yard” who “fight like hell,” Rutte interjected, laughing: “And then daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get them to stop.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks next to US President Donald Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during the NATO summit of heads of state and government on June 25, 2025 in The Hague, Netherlands.
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Rutte also publicly repeated previously private comments made to Trump — which the president had posted on his Truth Social site — in which he congratulated the U.S. leader for his “decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do.”
made up of 3.5% to be spent on “pure” military capabilities and 1.5% on security-related infrastructure — was just about “keeping Trump happy.”
“There is this U.S. request, ‘please equalize, because it’s not fair that we shoulder much more than the others are doing, and that we are carrying more weight than the others are doing’ … The U.S. has consistently had this request now for 60, 70 years. And finally, we will do it,” the NATO chief concluded.
