← Videos · Foreign Policy & Defense

Trump Participates in a Meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte

October 22, 2025 · The White House · 0:38:22

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House on October 22, 2025, as the White House broadcast records. “We’ve had some very good discussions today and things are going along pretty well as regarding Ukraine-Russia,” the President said, adding that the conflict “turned out to be tougher than the Middle East. The Middle East was supposed to be the tough one, and we’ve solved that puzzle, but this one will get solved also,” as he stated it.

Rutte credited the President’s leadership for the NATO summit success: “the fact that we are now at this 5 percent” of GDP defense spending, with Europeans “stepping up,” paying for U.S. weapons delivered to Ukraine, and working on a post-peace sustainment plan. On Russia policy, the President said he had canceled a planned Putin meeting — “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get, so I canceled it” — and announced “tremendous sanctions… against their two big oil companies,” calling the day “a very big day in terms of what we’re doing.” On Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine, he explained the weapon’s complexity: “It’ll take a minimum of six months, usually a year to learn how to use them… So, the only way a Tomahawk is going to be shot is if we shot it and we’re not going to do that.” He said he still believed Putin wanted to end the war, while adding: “I don’t think he’s right” about the sanctions having little effect.

He also previewed the Asia trip — “We’ll be going to Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan. In South Korea, I’ll be meeting with President Xi” — and tallied the peace record as “seven different wars… We have one left, it’ll be nine,” as he stated it. Rutte named the Middle East peace as “this tremendous success you had under your leadership” and pledged NATO’s help on Ukraine.

Why it matters

The meeting delivered the administration’s Russia-policy turn of the week — new sanctions on Russia’s two big oil companies and the Tomahawk line drawn — paired with Rutte’s public accounting of the NATO spending surge.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: the new U.S. sanctions on Russia’s two major oil companies announced October 22, 2025, in the Rutte meeting. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Meeting with the Secretary General of NATO” (official upload, embedded above). Remarks as delivered in the meeting.