Another week, another long list of faux pas executed by US president Donald Trump. This time, most were made on the European leg of his recent trip, in which he visited the Pope in Rome, European leaders in Brussels and took part in the G7 conference in Sicily.

Before arriving in Europe, Donald Trump visited the Middle East and had – on the whole – a fairly successful few days. His speech in Saudi Arabia restrained his previous anti-Islam rhetoric and said he wanted a partnership between the US and the Muslim world built on “tolerance and respect for each other”.

However, once Trump reached Europe, things began to spiral downhill. A series of mishaps were well documented by the commentators, the international press and Twitter…

Trump appears to shove Montenegrin Prime Minister

In a bizarre move showing the more childish side of Trump, a video emerged of him appearing to shove aside the Montenegrin prime minister Milo Đukanović in order to get to the front of a photo.

Did Trump just shove another NATO leader to be in the front of the group? pic.twitter.com/bL1r2auELd — Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) May 25, 2017

Handshake battle with French president Emmanuel Macron

In a subtle challenge to Trump’s position, newly-elected French president Emmanuel Macron engaged Trump in a well-documented ‘handshake battle’. Ahead of a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, the two men locked hands for so long and so fiercely that their knuckles began to turn white, with the French leader maintaining the shake for just a little while longer.

Macron say Trump handshake was no accident: “One must show you won’t make small concessions, even symbolic ones.” https://t.co/BylqlhrTRD pic.twitter.com/aMjQqCbmai

— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) May 28, 2017

Following this, the two men engaged in a second round a few days later, with Trump appearing to attempt to pull Macron’s arm out of his socket.

Macron v Trump handshake round two pic.twitter.com/3JESsE1ixm — Matthew Champion (@matthewchampion) May 25, 2017

Afterwards, Macron told a Sunday newspaper in France that “my handshake with him, it wasn’t innocent.”

Macron added: “One must show that you won’t make small concessions, even symbolic ones, but also not over-publicise things, either.”

EU criticism

According to Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir, Trump’s main problem with the EU comes from his business experience. According to a source, he told Belgian prime minister Charles Michel that in Scotland in had opened a club, but in Ireland it took him two-and-a-half years to get a licence and that “did not give him a very good image of the EU.”

All-in-all, his European leg of the trip was widely seen to be a disaster. So much so, in fact, that German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared an inevitable change in US-European relations going forward. She said that Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands”, adding that the time when her continent could rely on others was “over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days.”