Does a viral video show NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte excitedly saying "I just got viral! Yaaay! Because my good friend Donald J. Trump, he re-posted, he re-tweeted a message from me ... " ? No, that's not true: The man in the video is Dutch comedian Remko Vrijdag. Vrijdag's Instagram account shows him playing numerous roles including, from time to time, Rutte, who is the former Prime Minister of The Netherlands.
The video appeared in a Jan. 20, 2026 Instagram post (archived here) on the remkovrijdag account. It was captioned: "Rutte just got viral💨". In the video, Vrijdag begins by saying:
Hi, it's Mark Rutte, here. Headquarters, NATO chief of staff. And I just got viral! Yaay! Because my good friend, Donald J. Trump, he re-posted, he retweeted a message from me to him about his great leadership concerning Syria.
Aah, Syria. Yes, new leaders there, haha. You did very well, Donald. The new leaders there, who are, by the way, old, uh, Al Qaeda leaders, haha. But that's, yeah, something else. Water under the bridge, as we say.
This is what the thumbnail of the video on Instagram looked like at the time this fact check was written:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of video at instagram.com/remkovrijdag.)
The video is clearly not Rutte. It is also not AI, which a commenter on an X.com repost asserted (archived here).
Here's a screenshot from an October, 21, 2024 video (archived here) on Vrijdag's TikTok account, in which an actual photo of Rutte is superimposed on the lower lefthand corner of the comedian's performance of the parody of Rutte:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of video at tiktok.com/@remkovrijdag/video/7428177930175450401.)
Shaving the whiskers he often wears, donning frameless eye glasses and combing his hair to resemble Rutte's, Vrijdag plays the part to skewer Rutte for his support of President Donald Trump. IMDb describes Vrijdag as a comedian, actor, and writer, well-known in The Netherlands for his work with the comedy group De Vliegende Panters and for TV specials (archived here). Here's a screenshot of Vrijdag's Instagram profile grid, showing a June, 2025 Rutte impersonation, on the rightmost column, three videos down:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Instagram profile page at instagram.com/remkovrijdag.)
