Trump Claims Foreign Leaders Are Saying 'Sir, We Love You' Behind The Scenes—And Here Come The Jokes

President Donald Trump was widely mocked after claiming during a NATO press conference that other leaders are showering him with adoring praise, even saying, "Sir, we love you" behind the scenes.

That's hard to believe considering how tense things have been. Consider that Trump renewed not only his demand that the United States take control of Greenland but also threatened to sever trade ties with Spain, leaving NATO officials once again trying to ease tensions in Ankara, Turkey, this week.

In addition to attacking allies, Trump has been accused of harassing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, renewing a prior feud by sharing a photo of her from the G7 summit that shows her looking up at him with the words "restraining order needed" above it.

But Trump claimed people adored him in remarks during a press conference:

"If you could’ve seen the respect and the love in the room. And it’s love really for the country, for our country. I don’t want to say me because you’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s so conceited. He’s such a conceited person.’”

“But they do. They like the job I’m doing. They said, 'Sir, we love you.'

“These are grown people saying that. Isn’t that nice? Maybe, I don’t know, maybe they’re trying to get to me.”

You can hear what he said in the video below.

A quick way to tell Trump is lying is his use of the word "sir."

"The word seems to pop into his head more frequently when he is inventing or exaggerating a conversation than when he is faithfully relaying one," CNN's fact-checker Daniel Dale previously observed. "A 'sir' is a flashing red light that he is speaking from his imagination rather than his memory."

These anecdotes almost always center on some triumph Trump casts himself as solely responsible for, so he seems pretty convinced NATO is going to give him what he wants as he continues to accuse its members—as he has for years—of "cheating" the U.S. by relying too heavily on it for defense.

People were not buying his latest narcissistic anecdote.

CNBC's Steve Sedgwick reported that even before the press conference, "world leaders were telling me in quiet asides that the meeting with Trump had gone brilliantly, that he had been very happy, that he had listened—actually listened—to every leader in the big closed-door pow-wow and had left in a good mood."

Considering how weak he is known to be when flattered, we figure some world leaders have figured out how to play him as needed and are merely letting him run his mouth.