In a theatrical show of authority at the Oval Office on Monday, US President Donald Trump positioned top European leaders around his work desk like chastised and submissive schoolchildren before a stern headmaster.
The optics were unmistakable — Trump sitting at the center, issuing directives while his European counterparts sat silently and pensively, evoking a scene of power imbalance and quiet humiliation.
Photos from the widely publicized meeting, circulating on social media, have been described as an “embarrassing” power play by Trump against top European leaders, who, notably, were not greeted by the president himself upon arrival at the White House, but by former Fox News host Monica Crowley.
The photographs, which sparked a wave of “schoolroom” snark, showed Trump firmly ensconced behind the Resolute Desk, while the European leaders — including those from Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Finland, and the EU — were seated politely, almost submissively, across from him.
NATO’s Mark Rutte later described the White House session as “very successful,” but the dominant sentiment online was that Europe had come to be lectured, not negotiated with.
Some observers wondered how the European leaders, who had traveled to Washington as supposed “equals,” could accept such a demeaning arrangement.
Political commentator Rafael Behr captured the dynamic succinctly in a social media post: “European leaders behave like supplicants to an almighty Trump,” while Russian President Vladimir Putin, by contrast, cultivates him more as a protégé.
The Oval Office meeting came days after Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, where the US president smiled and clapped as the longtime adversary touched down for a meeting centered on Ukraine war.
Trump had arranged a dramatic US Air Force flyover, and even offered Putin a ride in his presidential limousine, gestures that didn’t sit well with the European allies.
In a theatrical metaphor, Behr portrayed European leaders as Pavlovian pigeons, performing meaningless rituals of charm to win favor. They will not, however, be able to revise Trump’s view of a world divided between mighty power players, to whom no rules apply, and vassal states.
Trump began the day by meeting with embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, followed by a high-profile session with seven European leaders at the White House to discuss an end to the protracted Ukraine war.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte were all in attendance.
The meeting was loaded with symbolism and strategic choreography. European leaders sat in a semicircle around Zelensky to make sure that another Oval Office humiliation was avoided, six months after he had an unprecedented public confrontation with Trump.
In their last meeting, Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, ridiculed Zelensky and humiliated him in full public view. Trump even allowed members of the media present to make incendiary remarks about the visiting Ukrainian president’s casual attire.
This time was no different, though the humiliation and ridicule took a different form.
Political commentators and netizens were quick to dissect the optics. Many argued that the meeting between unequals underscored Europe’s continued subservience to Washington on foreign policy matters.
An X user mocked their lack of pushback: “Do none of these ‘leaders’ have any testosterone whatsoever or PR teams that can approve/reject seating arrangements. Most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen for the EU.”
“The sight of Europe’s ‘leaders’ sitting like naughty schoolchildren around Headmaster Trump (or ‘daddy’, as Mark Rutte prefers to call him) tells you all you need to know about the current state of European politics,” wrote author Carlos Martinez.
In a segment, Fox News host Jesse Watters, noted that the Europeans were sitting around the Resolute Desk “like they were waiting for class to start.”
“Trump was giving Europe a geography lesson. He even put up the big beautiful map and sent it home with Zelensky as homework,” he added.
One user called the scene “embarrassing,” while another was more blunt: “I cannot believe they let Trump seat them like a bunch of schoolchildren.”
Commenting on a photo from the meeting, geopolitical analyst Sharmine Narwani described it as the “collapse of European power, in a single picture.”
Daniel Foubert, a French-Polish geoeconomist, said that the EU has” made Europe meaningless.”
“European leaders rushed to Washington in numbers, desperate to be seen, desperate to be heard. They came not as partners but as petitioners, waiting for the word of one man who now holds all the cards,” Foubert said.
The meeting once again underscored the unequal dynamic between the US and its European allies, with Trump seizing another opportunity to assert his perceived dominance and belittle its counterparts publicly — something he takes sinister pleasure from.
What was advertised as a high-level diplomatic session to end the war in Ukraine quickly became meme fodder, as social media users ridiculed European leaders for appearing submissive before the magalomaniac US president.
The imagery and tone of the meeting were proof that Europe’s foreign policy remains tethered to Washington’s whims and a reminder of how power plays works and who gets to write the script.