It’s as though the White House’s social media team decided the world hadn’t cringed enough.
On Thursday, the official @WhiteHouse X account posted a slick music video-style clip to mark President Donald Trump’s return from this week’s NATO summit with the caption: “Daddy’s home… Hey, hey, hey, Daddy.”
Set to Usher’s ‘Hey Daddy’—a song unashamedly about making love, which includes the lyrics, “I won’t knock, won’t ring no bells...girl, tonight we gonna do a lot of sexin’...Can’t nobody do your body like this”—it saw Trump descend Air Force One, be driven in a cavalcade to the event, walk up a gaudy red carpet and greet fellow world leaders.
Just one minute later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hit copy-and-paste on her own feed, sharing the toe-curling video with the 1.3 million followers of her official work account, along with a ‘crying with laughter’ emoji.
The White House didn’t pick the word out of thin air, however. It had been used earlier in the day by the man who heads the world’s most powerful military alliance.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stood beside Trump at a NATO summit in The Hague as the U.S. president compared Israel and Iran to “two kids in a school yard.”
Then, while defending the president’s f-bomb tirade about the two warring countries, Rutte chirped: “Then daddy has to sometimes use strong language.”
Trump beamed, later telling reporters Rutte, “did it very [affectionately], ‘Daddy, you’re my daddy’.”
But rather than let the queasy exchange fade, Team Trump has decided to franchise it.
Online reaction was, as ever, mixed. Australian news journalist @SamClench posted on X: “Well, this is odd,” while Nevada-based policy adviser Elliot Malin wrote: “We can all agree this is weird, right?”
However, not everyone thought the video was quite so bizarre. Russian state outlet RT decided that the administration was just having “a little fun.” On X, pro-Trump influencer Benny Johnson described it as “easily the best thing on the internet.” Steady on.
By tagging Trump as “daddy,” Rutte is now in the company of MAGA diehards who appear to love the nickname.
Last year, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson even compared Trump to a “Dad” poised to deliver a “vigorous spanking” to America—portrayed as a “bad little girl”—during a particularly unsettling rally speech.
