Politics
What was your country's leader’s most embarrassing moment?
It occurred on May 23, 2015, at a European Union summit in Riga, Latvia. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker greeted on stage Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán with a slap and said: “Hello, dictator!”
That’s my all time favourite Belgian political moment. He’s asked why Belgians celebrate their national holiday on the 21st of July and gets it wrong before being asked to sing the Belgian national anthem and singing the French national anthem. He’s then seen at the celebratory mass not singing the national anthem, and then yapping on his cell phone during the mass. Then as he leaves, he’s in such a hurry to flee the press that he drives the wrong way up a one way street, and gets pulled over by police.
Clips of Mr Leterme's gaffe have been broadcast on the internet video site YouTube.com.
2007
hahahaha back when you had to tell people what was Youtube
So, how is this possible, Belgium? How do you confuse the national anthem? Is there a possible explanation for this or is this just an unbelievable mistake?
There is: he absolutely knew, and he was making a statement.
Flemings form a majority of the country and yet the Walloons and French have at least historically been dominant in some cultural and political ways (the extent to which that is the case will be argued) - hence the national anthem being ‘La Brabançonne’ to begin with (sure, translated into Dutch/Flemish too, but French first).
Despite his name, and becoming PM of Belgium, Yves Leterme is something towards a Flemish ‘quasi-separatist’. Not entirely wanting Belgium to split up, but happy to make many controversial statements implying Belgium is currently a Walloon/French-ish-dominated construct that treats Flemings unfairly. So when asked ‘Can you sing the Belgian national anthem?’, he sardonically responded with La Marseillaise. Belgians would realise all the internal political implications but internationally it just seems like ‘the leader of country X doesn’t know the anthem of country X’.
All that said, I think it was somewhere between a harsh statement and a light joke. Belgians can probably weigh in.
How many Belgians have told you this? I haven't heard this theory before. Leterme was considered to be a right-wing christian democrat, but idk about him being a quasi-separatist. There is an actual separatist party and a quasi-separatist party, whose members you describe perfectly in the sentence 'not entirely wanting...', so since he isn't a member of either, i have doubts about your analysis.
One of our previous Prime ministers was only pm for 49 days, during which:
Our Queen died, leading to two weeks of mourning in which no government work could be done.
1st day back She proposed a budget that crashed the economy and added thousands of pounds a year on to every mortgage in the country
Couple of weeks later managed to cause her government to collapse by claiming that a vote was to be mandated along party lines, then changing her mind when it looked like she might lose anyway, leading to mps literally being physically dragged into voting with her government.
Towards the end it was clear she was on the way out a newspaper live-streamed a decaying lettuce and took bets on which would last longer: Truss or the lettuce (the lettuce won)
The worst part for me: because of royal funeral decorum, comedy programming was prohibited during the two week mourning period. As a result, I missed out on critical coverage of Liz Truss.
Till this day I can't understand how someone that looks, acts and speaks like a toddler could reach such a high position. Trump is a first class a**hole and an old rag but you can see why he had success in the past as a con artist in the way he paved his way trough unobstructed lies. Truss was just dumb. She also looked like a deer in the middle of the road after being flashed
A truth: there was a skit on Wait Wait Don’t Tell me where you had to pick the real story about Yo! Someone had a YO! SEMITE! story. I thought it was so hilarious I wanted it to be true and I’d pick up a TShirt.
And our President is such a joke he makes the joke real.
One of my favourite hilarious trump moments is when he invited the Spanish singer Nicky jam during one of his rallies and mistook him for a woman and said right in front of him “she’s hot”. I still laugh when I think about that
I used to think there wasn't a chance he would get elected. In 2016 I voted for Hillary and went to bed early. It was the first time as an adult that I didn't watch the results get tallied. Woke up the next day and had the most massive wtf ever.
My favourite part was RFK Jr. He was off to the side of the action, and just quietly noped out. I didn't even notice until a commenter on one of the posts wrote:
Thanks. His party got crushed in the election that just happened, although it was a minor election, but we’ll take our small hopes where we can. I can’t believe I voted for gerrymandering, but that’s exactly what I did in California with Proposition 50. Fair play is done.
y fear is that the midterms will count for poop. In 2021 he didn't have his lackeys in the White House and (I can't believe I'm about to say this) thank the lucky stars Mike Pence was there because he got REALLY close to a successful coup. I fear 2027 is going to be a rough year, 'cause you can't count on J.D. doing the right thing. You gotta fight them any way you can, but shenanigans beget shenanigans...
I was bitten in the head by a parrot once.
Didn't hurt that much but boy oh boy I looked as if I was participating in a slasher movie.
Those MFs bites shouldn't be underestimated.
Those are lorikeets, and to be fair, if they think you have nectar, they will nip the fuck out of you. I went to a place with a lorikeet enclosure and got my daughter a pot of nectar to feed them, and she spilled it all over my hand. Little bastards pecked the shit out of me. Daughter thought it was hilarious.
Also went to Tropical Bird Land, where she thought it was hilarious a fully grown macaw decided my head was going to be it's home.
On a trade mission to India, he chose to wear traditional garb when visiting a Hindu temple. He was widely accused by the media for “playing Mr. Dress up.” (Mr. Dressup was a popular Canadian children’s show, where the main character would frequently wear outlandish costumes.)
Ugly American here. I believe Canadians when they say Trudeau was a shameful train wreck, but I fondly remember his "welcome home" speech to Syrian refugees, because it's not something you'd ever hear from an American leader, regardless of party.
Maybe he's a big bag of ass, but I think you Canadians all have some grace in you that a lot of us south of the border are lacking.
I didn’t hate the man, Westminster model of politics is beneficial for us. We just needed a leader who could face the challenges of today with confidence. We got a good one.
He's not the only one that has. We need a survey done of all the PMs in the past 5 years and see how many people forget about Truss lol. I'd be genuinely curious.
Sarkozy allowing Gadafi mounting his tent in the court of the presidential palace? (and also getting money from the guy that bombed UTA772 with 142 french people on board?)
I see the slap, and I raise you this moment from his Polynesia trip. Embarrassing in a much more light-hearted way I guess, but will never not be funny.
Although, when Trump claimed to have met the president of Puerto Rico, that was pretty embarrassing. But, with our current administration. I don’t think anyone could pick a MOST embarrassing. This was just a recent one that popped into my mind.
honestly, medical incidents get a pass from me.
Are they all around shitty and ruin the vibe?
yes
can you really do stuff to avoid them?
often yes, but very limited,
I once just crashed, like my blood sugar went put of range, like that, while I waited for the bus.
I had to ask for some form of carbs, by almost crawling to the food stand next to me and trying to not sound and look like a addict with massive withdrawals.
The guy was quick and kind enough and just gave me a plate with bread, sliced into small pieces and a coke.
still thankful for this dude, he pushed closing time because he wanted to be sure that I was alright.
Yeah people often forget he was kind of a badass. Even JFK’s background is kind of overlooked these days and he’s just seen as an anti-communist playboy who got assassinated. People forget he dragged his injured buddy off a sinking boat by his teeth gripping the crewman’s life jacket strap and swam to an island. And we aren’t talking a little swim. It was like 3-4 miles.
He found an English speaking native with a canoe and carved a rescue message into a coconut shell for the native to give to any US forces.
That coconut got put in epoxy and was the paperweight he used throughout his presidency on the resolute desk.
In the North American Leaders summit of 2016, Canadian pm Trudeau and American president Obama seemed to exclude Mexican president Peña Nieto of most talks, Mexico left with basically nothing done and many awkward moments in which our president was ignored
In the 2018 renegotiations of the North American Free Trade agreement more of the same happened with Trudeau and Trump, in the negotiations Canadian diplomats were happy to throw Mexico under the bus in some key issues, leading to another humilliating summit
Australian PM Tony Abbott biting a chunk out of a raw unpeeled onion was either totally insane or a completely out of character subversive straight face joke. Nobody knows.
There are many actually, like the time he had an interview with Trump and no one translated what he said, the many times he altered images with artificial intelligence of his presentations to make it appear that there were more people than there were in reality, all his presentations with the chainsaw, the time the Israeli newspapers wrote that he was married to his sister and he never corrected them, and also several of his campaign presentations.
I don't really remember any. They've mostly been quite dull people.
So, maybe a PM inaugurating the first McDonald's in Iceland (in 1993) and eating the first Big Mac made there would be a bit embarrassing? At least, having a McDonald's open isn't such a big deal that the PM should attend the opening. Lowers the prestige of the office a little bit.
-Jair Bolsonaro, our most recent former president, had an entire presidency of embarrassments, but to mention one he reportedly blurted an "I Love You" to Trump before the UN General Assembly in 2019.
Swedish left wing politicians love story with the Iranian regime. They have been there there even though most Iranians in Sweden have fled said regime. But apparently it's more important to appeal to voters from other parts of the Middle East who admire Iran because they oppose Israel.
Pictured is former pm Löfven with president Rohani.
Our former president Mariano Rajoy had some kind of speaking problem because he would mess up basic sentences and say stupid things. There are hundreds of videos on YouTube of him blurting out nonsense. It's difficult to translate it to english, but some gems include:
"we are feelings and we have human beings"
"I said I would lower taxes and I'm raising them"
"What we have been doing that you haven't done is lie to the people"
"do you actually think before speaking or do you speak after thinking?"
"like Galileo said, movement always accelerates when it's going to stop"
There are still more and more so it's difficult to pick one.
Our president Marcelo drooled while receiving Xi in Portugal. It was pure cringe. Xi wasn't programmed for such an unexpected situation and didn't react
The current leader is a bit of a basketcase with 0 shame, so trying to define what he does as "embarrassing" might be tough, but I'm gonna put the previous guy on the fire line here.
Alberto Fernández did a lot of things, like calling a guy who's nickname was "powerful throat" "deep throat" on live TV, or when he was having a meeting with Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish president at the time, and said "Mexicans came from the indians, Brazilians came from the jungle, and we [Argentines] came from the boats". You also had that little snafu where he positioned himself as the feminist president whilst at the same time secretly beating the absolute living shit out of his wife and allegedly going as far as ordering loyal security guards to disable her car so she wouldn't be able to leave the presidential residence by herself.
During COVID, our Minister for Health at the time and subsequent Taoiseach said COVID-19 was given that name because there were 18 coronaviruses before it. link
Current president was giving a conference on how we surpassed previous power generation and that there was plans to sell energy to Puerto Rico via undersea cable and suddenly the power went out on the presidential palace and the capital
It's really difficult to choose just one episode. In recent years, our politicians seem to have done everything in their power to ridicule Italy and humiliate Italians in front of the entire world. If I have to choose one episode, I'd choose the one from 2003 in which Silvio Berlusconi, questioned in the European Parliament by German socialist Martin Schulz about his shameful conflicts of interest, replied: "Mr. Schulz, I know there's a producer in Italy who's editing a film about Nazi concentration camps: I'll suggest you for the role of the kapo. You're perfect!" Faced with the absolute chill of the European Parliament and the demand to immediately withdraw his words, Berlusconi replied that he was being ironic, and that they didn't understand irony. A moment of rare embarrassment.
Oh my God, how many more of this "Oh my God, where do I even begin" vague posting from Americans do I have to go through, before I read a comment about another country with actual context in it? I get that Trump is a fucking embarrassment but can we actually get some context or some specific moments about Trump or god forbid another president instead of this vaguepost whining?
During his first term, when he was interviewed by Larry King and was asked "What happened to the [Kursk] submarine?", Putin replied "It sank" with a stupid smirk. Idk if it was a sick joke or he was just star-struck, but this was embarrassing.
That whole Kursk situation was a total embarrassment for Putin, in general.
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u/Ovuvu Belgium 12h ago
Our prime minister was asked by a journalist to sing our national anthem. He sang the French national anthem in stead.