Amid reports that diplomats and world leaders are beside themselves over Donald Trump’s threats at the NATO conference in Turkey, the president attempted Wednesday to spin the meeting as a lovefest.
Sound raspy and looking tired, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, looking over his shoulder, the president, as is his custom, departed from his prepared notes to claim that he is quite the popular guy with his counterparts.
“They respect us as a country," Trump said. "They didn't respect us two years ago. They laughed at us. NATO laughed at us, everybody laughed at us. They don't laugh anymore.”
Trump then added an odd remark.
“And they're, you know, just again, if you could have seen the respect and the love in the room and it's love really for the country, for our country," Trump said. "I don't want to say me because you'll say, oh, he's so conceited. He's such a conceited person. But they do.”
“I mean, you know, they, like the job I'm doing,” he continued. “They said, ‘We love, sir, we love you.’ These are grown people saying that. Isn't that nice?”
“Maybe, I don't know, maybe they're trying to get to me. And, in a way they did, because there was tremendous unity in that room,” he asserted.