It’s not every day that people publicly display their disdain for Donald Trump to his face, but sometimes, just like Melania, people can’t help it.
One of those humbling incidents involving the present American president has become one of his most embarrassing moments to date after an influential woman with status and money ignored him like a peasant, and the cameras were on.
Cameras captured the moment he crossed paths with then-Polish President Andrzej Duda nine years ago. Trump, 79, had traveled to Poland during his first term for the Three Seas Initiative summit that summer.
Both leaders’ respective wives were also present when Trump and Duda met in public. Trump was accompanied by American first lady Melania Trump, and Duda was escorted by Polish first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda.
Trump and Melania were standing on stage with Duda and Kornhauser-Duda when both couples began exchanging handshakes. However, the pleasantries were disrupted when Trump was apparently ignored by Kornhauser-Duda, 53.
After forcibly shaking hands with Duda following a photo-op, Trump reached his hand out to Kornhauser-Duda, but the longtime teacher seemed to slight Trump in favor of shaking hands with Melania instead.
In an extended video of the awkward moment, Kornhauser-Duda clearly turns back to Trump to shake hands after initially moving past him. Despite that show of respect, the earlier apparent snub still made international headlines at the time.
A clip of Kornhauser-Duda supposedly brushing off the most powerful person on the planet began circulating on X and Threads again in January 2025. In particular, people zeroed in on Trump’s facial expression as he realized he might have been rejected in favor of his spouse.
One Threads commenter exclaimed, “Look at Trump’s face. This woman is a class act!” Another poster expressed, “Oh, orange face was embarrassed. He had egg all on his face.”
A third account on the platform declared, “Wow. Look at the hate. I would never let even his pinky touch me.” Additionally, someone added, “Such an elegant, classy BURN!!”
Likewise, an X user wrote, “This classic burn. Just perfect.”
Others leaned into the narrative that Trump was likely pissed at a man he was second for a moment.
“It angered him, too. I can see it in his face,” read one X post. The scornful look in Trump’s eyes suggested he was irked by Kornhauser-Duda not acknowledging him before Melania.
Evidently, Trump did not hold a grudge against the Polish first lady. In 2019, he called Poland an “exemplary ally” after Kornhauser-Duda and her husband visited the White House in Washington, D.C.
View on Threads
Trump’s online critics recently dug up another uncomfortable overseas incident from 2017 that gave the impression that contemporaries on the global stage do not enjoy being around the former reality television show star.
A photographer captured a closed-eyed Trump alone at a table next to two empty chairs at the 2017 Group of 20 forum in Hamburg, Germany, while other G1 attendees could be seen having conversations around him — similar to footage of Trump looking lonely and out of place while Melania talks with her 81-year-old father, Viktor Knavs, across the table.
Even though the internet will not let Trump’s humiliating experiences from his first term be forgotten, the billionaire real estate magnate was still able to return to the White House after winning the 2024 presidential election.
Trump was first elected president in 2016 but lost his reelection campaign in 2020. Duda, 53, served as the sixth president of Poland from 2015 to 2025. He was ineligible to run for a third term. His successor, Karol Nawrocki, was inaugurated as Poland’s president in August 2025.
