Donald Trump is facing total mockery after claiming victory at a venue that for more than a century has symbolized national defeat.
The president signed a 14-point memorandum intended to wind down the war he launched against Iran. Trump, 80, put pen to paper Wednesday at the G7 summit in France, at a dinner hosted by President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles.
The historic Treaty of Versailles, signed at the palace in 1919, formally ended World War I by imposing a punitive peace on Germany. The country’s resulting loss of territories and reparations to the victors led to economic conditions so dire that historians broadly agree the treaty was a driving force in the rise of Nazism and, later, the outbreak of World War II.
Trump has called this week’s deal “very strong,” even as he joked that his Vice President JD Vance would take the fall if it doesn’t work out. Iran has agreed to reopen an oil corridor whose closure has sent global gas prices skyrocketing, with the White House rolling back sanctions, unfreezing Iranian assets, and underwriting a $300 billion reconstruction fund.
One X user commented: “Trump signed the worst agreement since Versailles at Versailles.”
Others were quick to join the pile-on. “Unreal,” French entrepreneur and author Arnaud Bertrand wrote. “The symbolism of Trump signing a surrender agreement at Versailles in which the U.S. agrees to pay massive reparations is just too perfect.”
“If history teaches us anything, it is that war-ending agreements signed in the Palace of Versailles are famously durable,” the Economist’s Gregg Carlstrom added. “Fitting since Versailles 2.0 is likely to be as disastrous as Versailles 1.0,” veteran British journalist Andrew Neil chimed in.
The White House, for its part, appears to have been oblivious to the venue’s less-than-favorable optics—putting out a post that not once, but twice underscored the fact that Trump had signed the document “at Versailles.”
Some users even speculated that Macron may have pulled off “the greatest diplomatic troll of all time” by getting Trump to put his name to the document at the palace. The two leaders have long enjoyed a friendly but often testy rivalry.
“Mon Dieu. Versailles. Macron is trolling the grand ignoramus [Trump] like no one has ever trolled him before,” lawyer and prominent Trump critic George Conway wrote. “Macron, who does know what the other agreement Versailles is famous for [sic], must be working hard to suppress the giggling,” the Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov added.
The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Trump’s deal has left his own party seething. Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, has called it “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.” He added that Ronald Reagan, Trump’s self-professed political hero, must be “rolling over in his grave.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, usually a dependable MAGA ally, chastised the president for acting on “very poor advice” and warned against funneling money to “theocratic lunatics who want to murder us.” Conservative pundits have not proven much kinder.
Fox News host Mark Levin tore into the $300 billion reparation arrangement as a “slush fund,” asking why the U.S. was “committing to helping reconstruct the terror regime we presumably just destroyed.” Right-wing radio host Erick Erickson was of much the same view, calling it an “American surrender.”
The president has returned to D.C. in a dark mood. Trump, back at the White House after a red-eye from France, unloaded on Truth Social at 4:32 a.m. Thursday to brand critics of the deal “fools.”
He dismissed them as “either jealous, bad people, or stupid,” pointing to a stock market at “RECORD HIGH” and insisting that oil prices were already “tumbling” before signing off with his trademark slogan: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
