Donald Trump’s latest meeting with African leaders was meant to spotlight progress on a peace agreement, but a single photograph of the president with world leaders seemed more interesting to viewers online.
Trump’s exchange with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington carried its own tense moments, especially after Trump mispronounced both leaders’ names and tried to smooth it over with a joke.
The talks carried on as scheduled — but the internet had already latched onto a single frozen frame of Kenyan President William Ruto, whose expression quietly became the real headline as he appeared to smell something foul.
“I’m gonna guess that the guy next to him is holding his breath so he doesn’t have to smell the stank coming off of the orange buffoon,” one Threads user wrote.
Another added, “We’ve already covered and know about vagineck. But the man next to him might be holding his breath.”
A third said, “The smell must have been horrific.”
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Someone else chimed in with, “Trump just [crapped] his diaper,” while another closed it out with, “Dirty diaper.”
The diplomatic moment slowly evolved into a smell-based meme, with viewers convinced they had caught something the cameras weren’t supposed to reveal. And it raised a bigger question floating around Threads all afternoon: why do people online think foreign leaders keep reacting as if the president smells bad?
The conversation broadened as users revisited another viral moment from a separate international forum in Egypt, where Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was photographed in the background during remarks from Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif.
Meloni’s hand covered her nose and mouth as Trump stood nearby, and viewers immediately looped the old image back into the fresh conversation, joking that the two photos formed a pattern.
Meloni caught a whiff of Trump’s diaper pic.twitter.com/M2hkiQlY4M
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) October 13, 2025
Speculation grew, and suddenly the internet had built its own storyline about how foreign dignitaries might be responding to the former president’s presence — or at least how social media imagines they are.
From there, one more resurfaced clip deepened the running joke. During an Oval Office photo op, Trump presented Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa with a bottle from his own fragrance line. After spraying himself, Trump leaned in to spray Al-Sharaa as well, prompting visible hesitation before the Syrian leader brushed the mist from his beard.
Trump pivoted to Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and sprayed both sides of his face with the same enthusiasm. The moment reignited the irony conversation, especially now that smell-related memes were dominating the timeline.
The internet didn’t stop at foreign leaders, either.
There’s no way….is this real?
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) November 12, 2025
Trump apparently was spraying cologne on the Syrian president who was an Al-Qaeda commander at the White House pic.twitter.com/ePFsdaEoEo
A still from an August domestic briefing resurfaced showing Secretary of State Marco Rubio appearing to discreetly cover his nose while seated next to Trump. The briefing itself ran for hours, but only that frame stuck, becoming yet another piece of digital evidence for Threads users determined to thread every moment into the same ongoing joke.
Once the comments begin rolling in, that one picture adds to this lore about Trump’s funkiness that keeps making him into a punchline.
