JK Rowling Calls Trump A ‘Tiny Little Man’ After He Pushes Montenegro Prime Minister Dusko Markovic

The day after first lady Melania Trump slapped away President Donald Trump’s hand in Rome, the couple made headlines again when “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling slammed him as a “tiny, little man.” The insult was in reference to Trump pushing the prime minister of Montenegro out of the way during a meeting for a summit at NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) headquarters in Brussels on Thursday.

In the beginning of the clip, Trump is nowhere to be seen. But that doesn’t last for long. Within moments, he appears on camera with the group of leaders and pushes aside Dusko Markovic with a smug smile. He then fixes his jacket once he gets to the front, apparently basking in the spotlight.

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The act unsettled Rowling. “You tiny, tiny, tiny little man,” the British writer captioned a GIF of the moment. The post was shared nearly 10,000 times and like nearly 20,000 times by her 10.4 million followers within minutes.

In response to Rowling’s caption, a fan shared an altered GIF, which depicted Trump as a physically smaller man. “You’ve got that right,” the netizen wrote to Rowling. She retweeted the post to her millions of followers.

CNBC breaking news desk reporter Steve Kopack was apparently one of the first to share the shove on social media. “Did Trump just shove another NATO leader to be in the front of the group?” he tweeted to his nearly 30,000 followers. The GIF alone amassed more than 35,000 favorites and more than 32,000 shares.

He then slowed the GIF down in case anyone struggled to see it. “Slo-mo: Trump appears to push aside/shove another NATO leader to get to the front of the group,” he wrote. “Update: Duško Marković of Montenegro is the person Trump pushed. Quite the welcome to the alliance. Montenegro becomes NATO member on June 5.”

Montenegro is slated to join NATO on June 5. The coastal country was once a part of the former Yugoslavia, and one of the six republics that included Slovenia, the native homeland of Trump's wife. Montenegro is bordered by Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania, and across the Adriatic Sea from Italy.

NATO was formed after the end of World War II in 1949. It’s an international organization whose goal is to connect the armies of various countries, including the U.S. and Great Britain.

Trump once called the organization “obsolete.”

“It’s obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago,” Trump said about NATO in January. “Secondly, countries aren’t paying what they should” and NATO “didn’t deal with terrorism.”

Trump later altered his stance.

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“They had a quote from me that NATO's obsolete. But they didn't say why it was obsolete. I was on Wolf Blitzer, very fair interview, the first time I was ever asked about NATO, because I wasn't in government. People don't go around asking about NATO if I'm building a building in Manhattan, right?” Trump told the Associated Press on April 24.

“So they asked me, Wolf ... asked me about NATO, and I said two things. ‘NATO's obsolete’ — not knowing much about NATO, now I know a lot about NATO — NATO is obsolete, and I said, ‘And the reason it's obsolete is because of the fact they don't focus on terrorism.’ You know, back when they did NATO, there was no such thing as terrorism,” he added.

The president echoed a similar sentiment Thursday, saying NATO leaders needed to pay more money for defense. He did not specifically affirm Article 5, which says the U.S. would defend a NATO country if it were attacked.

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