US President Donald Trump used a closed-door lunch with Kennedy Center board members to ridicule French President Emmanuel Macron and question the reliability of NATO, according to video briefly posted on the White House’s YouTube channel before being removed.

Speaking to the invited guests, Trump recounted his efforts to rally European support for the US-led war against Iran, which has destabilized the Middle East and drawn in American forces and regional partners. He said he had reached out to several NATO allies, including France, to request military assistance in the Gulf.

“We didn’t need them, but I asked anyway,” Trump told the room, before turning his attention to Macron with a personal jab. “I call up France, Macron — whose wife treats him extremely badly. Still recovering from the right to the jaw,” he said, prompting laughter from some attendees.

The remark appeared to reference a widely circulated 2025 video from a trip to Vietnam, in which Brigitte Macron seemed to push her husband’s face away during a public appearance. The French president later dismissed the clip as misleading and part of a broader disinformation effort.

Trump went on to describe his purported conversation with Macron about sending French naval assets to support operations in the Gulf. “I said, ‘Emmanuel, we’d love to have some help in the Gulf even though we’re setting records on knocking out bad people and knocking out ballistic missiles. We’d love to have some help. If you could, could you please send ships immediately.’”

He then slipped into a caricatured French accent to imitate Macron’s alleged response: “‘No no no, we cannot do that, Donald. We can do that after the war is won.’” Trump said he rejected that stance. “I said, ‘No no, I don’t need after the war is won Emmanuel.’”

From there, Trump broadened his criticism to the alliance itself. “So I learned about NATO — NATO won’t be there if we ever have the big one, you know what I mean by the big one,” he said, without specifying whether he was referring to a large-scale conventional conflict or a nuclear confrontation.

He labeled NATO a “paper tiger,” reinforcing a pattern of public attacks on the transatlantic alliance since returning to the White House. His comments echoed those of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who recently warned that Washington “is going to have to reexamine” its relationship with NATO once the Iran conflict ends.