Is Donald Trump your “daddy”?

The Nato chief’s comment was not the first time that Maga followers and allies have gone full Freudian.

Maga Republicans have major daddy issues, and some world leaders seem to be taking note. Last week, after Donald Trump dropped an f-bomb when comparing Israel and Iran to children fighting in the schoolyard, Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte added that “Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.” Later, Trump told reporters that Rutte meant it as a sign of affection, characterising his comments as, “Hey Daddy. You’re my Daddy.” The Trump White House was so tickled that they put out a slick video of the Nato summit – mostly featuring various white men gesticulating – with the Usher song “Hey Daddy” as the soundtrack.

The video, titled “Daddy’s Home”, was not the first time that the Trump fandom had gone full Freudian and made the president into a bizarre icon of sexualised authority. Back in October, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson told a crowd full of Trump rally-goers that that the then-candidate would come in and restore order. “Dad is pissed,” Carlson said. “And when dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.’”

Instead of recoiling in horror, the crowd loved it, chanting “Daddy’s Home” as Trump took the stage. Days after the Nato summit, the Trump team began selling $35 “DADDY” T-shirts emblazoned with Trump’s mugshot.

There is much to say about the psychosexual issues at play here, as the self-styled masculine Real Men of Maga collectively whimper for a bigger, stronger, older man to punish them like naughty little boys they are. The sexual connotations of “daddy” are clear, and somehow even more disturbing than other widely disseminated Trump memes, including those of the president as Jesus Christ. And the “daddy” moniker is clearly also about the fear that has always animated conservative politics: Maga voters want Trumpian authoritarianism because they hope a Big Daddy will make the big, scary world a little less frightening. Daddy may punish his naughty but beloved children, but he’ll blow away anyone who threatens them.

The “daddy” turn from foreign leaders, though, is a different animal. “The wording appears to have been stolen from the adult entertainment industry,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, the former foreign minister of Lithuania, observed on X. “It reduces Europe to the state of a beggar – pitiful before our Transatlantic friends and Eastern opponents alike.” He’s right about the “adult entertainment industry” connotations of the word. But to be a bit more explicit about it: if Trump is Daddy, doesn’t that mean Europe is getting screwed?

Maybe Mark Rutte has his own daddy issues that he let slip in front of the press, and perhaps that’s a big topic of conversation with his therapist this week. I suspect, though, that he called Trump Daddy as a way of cosying up to the president by using the submissive language of Trump’s Maga followers – the verbal equivalent of bending the knee. Trump’s first term was a disaster for the world, and his second one has somehow managed to be far, far worse despite only being a few months old. But instead of standing strong against the strongman, many of the world’s leaders – and not just the other authoritarians, but self-styled small-d democrats – have become obsequious and servile.

This mass submission is unbecoming and at times humiliating. But it’s also revealing of the weaknesses of all the men (and they are mostly men) involved here. The world’s most powerful people falling all over themselves to flatter Trump isn’t just a bad look; it should also worry Americans (and the world) to know that our president is such an easily manipulated egomaniac that everyone around him seems to have concluded lavishing praise on him is the best way to get him to act in their interests. That’s not the sign of a wise leader; it’s indicative of just how little he knows, how few positions he sincerely holds and much of a liability he is. After all, while the Nato head using “daddy” to nudge Trump toward a sensible policy on the alliance will hopefully result in an outcome that makes the world safer and more stable, Rutte is far from the only person to play the flattery game. What happens if Trump likes someone else’s overtures more – and that someone is, say, a Vladimir Putin or a Benjamin Netanyahu or a similarly malevolent character?

Some leaders have managed to butter Trump up without degrading themselves, mostly by being willing to also criticise him when he acts badly. French president Emmanuel Macron has made his American counterpart a guest of honour at a Bastille Day celebration and never misses an opportunity to praise him when he believes Trump is doing the right thing. But he rarely crosses the line into the kind of “daddy” debasement on display at Nato.

Foreign leaders, like Democratic politicians at home, are caught in an unenviable bind. The US is a fantastically wealthy country that has historically used some of its resources for the greater good, whether that was through supporting Nato or funding health and development around the globe. Now, we are pulling back from that. Trump employed the world’s richest man to clean up alleged government waste, and Elon Musk decided that the most wasteful thing America was doing was saving the lives of people with HIV and the world’s poorest children, and so he and his Doge team hit delete on USAID. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr just announced that the US will no longer fund Gavi, a groundbreaking global vaccination program that researchers estimate has saved the lives of some 17 million children in just 20 years. The idea of sucking up to an administration that is so enthusiastically wrecking the world is nauseating. But also: if flattering a man who deserves nothing but scorn means he does less damage, might it be worth the humiliation?

Trump departed the Nato summit early. Nato, though, still exists with the US as a member, despite Trump’s repeated threats to pull America out of it. He even deemed the alliance “not a rip-off,” a real pivot from his previous statements. Daddy diplomacy seems to have worked. In this particular scenario, that’s a relief. But it raises the question: who else might be fawning over Trump, and what might their obsequiousness get them in return?