U.S. President Donald Trump holds a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy alongside the NATO leaders summit at the Bestepe Presidential Compound, in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
President Donald Trump's stop in Ankara, Türkiye for the latest NATO summit proved that the biggest problem the world is facing is Trump himself, one columnist argued.
David Rothkopf, global affairs columnist for The Daily Beast, wrote in a new op-ed that Trump's appearance at the NATO summit was clearly uncomfortable for multiple world leaders. For instance, he noted that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni seemed hesitant to be around Trump at all after she forcibly pushed back against his claim that she begged for a photo with him. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also seemed uncomfortable as Trump described him as "difficult" to his face.
"Looking into the eyes of NATO leaders and guests like Volodymyr Zelensky, who had to endure meetings with President Trump at the North Atlantic alliance’s latest summit in Turkey, you could almost hear their pleas. You could see their pain," Rothkopf wrote.
He also noted that Trump put on a "shocking display of his ever more egregious unfitness to be president" with his antics. One of them was that he called the Iranian regime "scum" and ordered new attacks against the country.
World leaders like Mark Rutte, NATO's secretary general, seem to be running out of tricks to keep Trump placated.
"The bananas may distract him for a minute. But in the end, you’ve still got a rabid baboon on your hands," Rothkopf wrote.
"And at the end of the day, Trump’s by turns embarrassing, awkward, reckless, offensive, and dangerous performance—and the reaction of most if not all of the other NATO leaders present—makes clear is that, right now, the central problem in geopolitics is that we have a rabid baboon on our hands," he added.