Donald Trump hurled a tablet across the Oval Office when technical difficulties prevented him from joining a group call with Canada’s then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The incident took place during French president Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the White House in February 2025, about two weeks into Trump’s second term. The two leaders were using the device to join a call led by Trudeau when they were met with tech issues. Trump became annoyed and threw the device over the Resolute Desk and onto the floor, an official who was present told the Journal.
The tantrum came as European leaders were already scrambling to manage Trump’s second term. In January 2025, nearly 30 European leaders held a secret emergency meeting in Brussels to discuss a future free from dependence on the US, prompted in part by Trump’s threat to use military force to take Greenland, an autonomous territory of Nato member Denmark. One leader present compared the meeting to group therapy.
“Trump hurled a tablet across the Oval Office after tech issues blocked a call with Trudeau, as European leaders secretly plotted to manage him.”
Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, dubbed the “Trump whisperer”, has worked to salvage the alliance by praising Trump – a tactic European press coined “flattery diplomacy”. Rutte leaned heavily on praise and even mimicked Trump’s signature style of texting in all-caps, leaving other world leaders jokingly referring to him as “an actor who never broke character”. At the secret Brussels meeting, Rutte urged leaders to deliver Trump a “win” by disguising an increase in defence spending as a Trump victory. Soon after, European leaders began copying the president’s syntax and hyperbole in text messages. Finland’s president and Norway’s prime minister “workshopped” their texts, discussing which words to capitalise. Norway’s Jonas Gahr Store reportedly preferred that his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb, message Trump, over worries that mentioning Norway – home of the Nobel Peace Prize – would draw Trump’s ire after the president failed to secure last year’s title.
But for all the effort to manage Trump, the UK may be fighting a losing battle for relevance in Washington. Mehdi Hasan, the former New Statesman political editor who now runs the media company Zeteo, told the New Statesman’s podcast: “No one in America cares about the UK.” Hasan, who moved to the US 12 years ago, recalled being told the same thing 15 years ago and dismissing it as arrogant. Now he agrees: “If you walk towards Capitol Hill and flag down a passing member of Congress, they would not be able to tell you Andy Burnham’s name. Many of them would struggle to tell you Keir Starmer’s name. These are members of Congress. I’m not talking about vox pops of people on the street. I’m talking about the people in power.”
Hasan argued that the “special relationship” in the minds of most members of Congress is with Israel, not the UK. “That is who most people, especially on the right, would say, ‘Oh, the 51st state.’ That is Israel, not the United Kingdom.” He noted that he had seen little to no coverage of Andy Burnham in US mainstream media.
The revelation of Trump’s tablet-throwing fury, combined with European efforts to placate him, underscores the transatlantic power dynamic – one in which the UK, despite its historical ties, may find itself increasingly overlooked.