He was kept clear of Angela – like a mutt pulled away from the sausages
BREAKFAST meetings are pretty ghastly things on the best of days but Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg must wish he had never agreed to yesterday’s with Donald Trump. You should have stayed in bed, Jens. Room service much more hyggelig.
The two statesmen and their aides had barely sat down – they had not even unwrapped their twirled napkins – when the US President went off on a prolonged complaint about Germany. The Germans were a ‘captive’ state – what a pity he did not say vassal state – of Russia, so dependent were they on the Kremlin for energy supplies. They did not contribute enough to Nato’s budgets. Instead they sent billions to the Russians, the potential enemy from whose attack American taxpayers were spending a fortune to defend them.
‘Explain that!’ cried an exasperated Mr Trump. ‘It can’t be explained! You know that!’ Mr Stoltenberg, who is meant to remain friendly with all Nato members, gulped.
Mr Trump was only warming to his theme. The Germans’ reliance on a gas pipeline ‘should never have been allowed to happen’, he continued.
‘You and I agree it’s inappropriate,’ he said, pulling Mr Stoltenberg further into the mire of the argument.
Poor old Stolters. Whose dummkopf idea had it been to hold this breakfast meeting? Worse, who agreed to let the media watch the start of the blessed thing? If Trump would only shut up for half a second, Nato PR handlers could shoo the reptiles out of the room. But they could not do so while Mr Trump was still speaking.
Stop he would not. So constant and vexed was his flow that underlings did not dare interrupt. Around the table there was paralysis. Before each member of the breakfast party quivered a glass of orange juice. No one had touched a drop of it. Were they awaiting grace? Or frozen in horror at the diplomatic niceties that were being smashed. Mind you, that may simply have been the tinkling of dental enamel as smiles cracked.
To Mr Trump’s right sat the US ambassador to Nato, Kay Bailey Hutchison. She had laughed in a courtly manner when Mr Trump made an opening joke about how newspapers never reported anything good about him. The delight colonising her face soon became distinctly strained. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on the Trumpster’s other side, was enjoying it a little more. But when the Germany harangue reached its eighth minute, even the portly Pompeo started to look around the room, as if begging waiters to arrive with the croissants.
CLASSIC Trump. He banged home his soundbites repeatedly, behaving in a way that polite diplomats (the soft-cough, extended little-pinkie brigade) would never dream of conducting themselves. But normal American taxpayers might well cheer.
So rude! Well, if you insist. But strikingly forthright and possibly more effective than Barack Obama’s haloed progress through such events. Europeans fawned over him – and gaily ripped him off.
The moment Mr Trump finally stopped talking, the press handlers bundled the cameras and scribes out of the room. ‘C’mon, guys, let’s go!’ they screamed. What a PR disaster for Nato.
For Mr Trump, quite possibly a triumph. I bet he enjoyed those pastries when they finally arrived. If only he was our point man on Brexit. Later the American president, who shoulder-rolls through these events, pumped with testosterone, mingled with other Nato leaders.
Spotting Theresa May he strode forward, holding out his hand. She chose not to shake that small but troublesome paw and instead introduced it to our new Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who was grinning like a teenybopper.
At the ‘family photograph’, where Mrs May was wearing a pair of sunglasses possibly inherited from the late Sunnie Mann, Mr Trump was kept a careful distance from Germany’s Angela Merkel, rather as the owner of a Staffordshire bull terrier will keep his mutt away from butchers’ sausages.
When military aircraft flew overhead, all the Nato leaders looked to the left. Mr Trump looked to the right.