Donald Trump’s glowing orb Saudi photo op gets trolled by Nordic PMs

"Who rules the world?" Nordic PMs poke fun at Trump's Saudi photo op.

It’s not very usual for world leaders to publicly troll each other (though, we do believe they should. Politics would be so much more fun), but the prime ministers of the five Nordic countries have just given it a shot and Netizens love it. These guys just posted a photograph of themselves holding on to a soccer ball, a take on the photo of President of the United States Donald Trump, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz all huddled together around a glowing globe that created waves online last week.

That orb was an illuminated globe at the Global Centre for Combating Extremist Ideology in Riyadh, the opening of which the three leaders were attending on May 21. Eerie lighting gave the photo an aura of comic-book villains plotting world domination, an image that proved irresistible to the Twitterati.

Turns out, it was equally irresistible to Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Juha Sipila, Bjarni Benediktsson, Erna Solberg and Stefan Lofven, the prime ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, respectively. The five PMs, who were recently at a meeting in Bergen, Norway, to discuss cooperation among their countries, came up with their own version of the power image, and posted it on social media. Norway’s Solberg made the comparison explicit, with her Facebook post, in which she wrote: “Who rules the world? Riyadh vs Bergen. Don’t know what those in the upper photo were thinking. In the lower one are the five Nordic prime ministers, holding a ball with the sustainability goals. We’re hoping they’ll be a roadmap for the future.”