In a horrifying turn for people with eyeballs, Fox News has embraced the nickname recently bestowed upon President Donald Trump by Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte: “Daddy” Trump.
“Daddy has to sometimes use strong language,” the Dutch politician said while speaking to Trump this week about the Israel-Iran conflict.
Though Rutte has denied calling the U.S. president “daddy,” the Trump team absolutely ran with the label, wasting no time cashing in with Trump-branded “Daddy” merch. Trump himself seemed to delight in the comments, telling reporters “he did it very affectionately—‘daddy. You’re my daddy.’”
Now, Fox News appears to have gone all in on the sobriquet, which—literal meaning apart—can also refer to “daddy kink” or “daddy dom” sexual role play.
“Soon, Africa will be calling him daddy, too,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said with a smirk on Friday after playing a clip of Trump flirting with Hariana Veras, a Congolese journalist, during an Oval Office signing.
It wasn’t the only instance. Earlier on Friday, Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo had a warning for Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, who appeared to mock Trump to his face during a photo op.
“She better be careful,” Arroyo told host Charles Hurt. “She could get a personalized bunker buster from Daddy Trump if she is not really careful.”
The comments are the latest in a long line of bizarre “daddy” fetishization that Fox associates and MAGA supporters alike have engaged in. In 2024, former Fox News star Tucker Carlson described Trump during a rally in Georgia as an angry father who is going to give a “vigorous spanking” to a “bad little girl” known as America. In January of this year, actor Mel Gibson appeared on Fox News to praise “daddy” Trump for “taking his belt off” during his visit to survey the damage after the California wildfires.
The official White House X account solidified the recent uptick of the trend with a music video posted to social media captioned “Daddy’s home” set to Usher’s “Hey Daddy.”
On Wednesday, Michigan State Sen. Jonathan Lindsey seemed to approve of the “Daddy” title, saying that Trump is like a “father figure” to many of them. Upon hearing this, Michigan’s Senate President Pro Tempore Jeremy Moss, who is proudly gay, replied: “You don’t wanna know what ‘daddy’ means in my community.”
For a movement obsessed with “traditional values,” this full-throated embrace of BDSM-coded language is startlingly progressive.
