President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia has been fraught with controversy, from a potentially-illegal $110 billion arms deal, to his shifting rhetoric on Islam, to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ massive donation to the World Bank “women’s empowerment” fund proposed by Ivanka Trump.
It was already a lot for any news consumer to take in. And then came the orb.
On Sunday, the Saudi Embassy tweeted a photo showing Trump, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud Salman and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi with their hands on a basketball-sized glowing orb. The embassy wrote that the men were there to “inaugurate The Global Center for Combatting Extremist Ideology in Riyadh.” Placing their hands on the luminescent globe was a symbolic gesture for a video about the new center, according to the Saudi Gazette.
However, the evil sorcerer aesthetic of the three men cast in shadows, their faces lit by the glowing orb in between them, was too much for the good people of Twitter to handle without comment.
CLARIFICATION: Language has been amended to clarify Ivanka Trump’s involvement with the World Bank fund for women’s empowerment.