U.S. President Donald Trump’s geographic confusion was the butt of a joke between world leaders at a summit Thursday.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama was filmed poking fun with French President Emmanuel Macron and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev at the European Political Community meeting in Copenhagen on Thursday.
“You should make an apology … to us because you didn’t congratulate us on the peace deal that President Trump made between Albania and Azerbaijan,” Rama told Macron, leading Aliyev to burst out laughing.
“I am sorry for that,” Macron joked.
Trump has repeatedly confused Armenia and Albania when talking about his efforts to resolve the long-standing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“I solved wars that was unsolvable. Azerbaijan and Albania, it was going on for many, many years, I had the prime ministers and presidents in my office,” he said during an appearance on Fox News last month.
And during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump said, “We settled Aber-baijan and Albania,” butchering the name of one South Caucasus country and confusing the other one entirely.
To be clear: Trump brokered a deal between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House in August, with both countries committing to end decades of fighting and expand ties with Washington. The Republican leader hailed the pact as a major diplomatic victory, burnishing his credentials as he campaigns for a Nobel Peace Prize.
He has repeatedly claimed to have ended seven wars since returning to office this year by acting as a mediator — something the Associated Press has fact-checked as false. Among the conflicts Trump has claimed to have resolved are wars between Serbia and Kosovo and Egypt and Ethiopia. While there are tensions between those countries, they have not recently gone to war.
India, for its part, has rubbished the White House’s claim that Trump contributed to deescalating hostilities with Pakistan in May.
The Armenia-Albania mix-up is not the first instance of Trump showing a questionable grasp of geography.
He once confused Hungary and Turkey on the campaign trail in 2023, referring to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as “the leader of Turkey” and saying his country has a “front” with Russia. (Neither Turkey nor Hungary have a land border with Russia.)
And ahead of a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August, Trump said, “We’re going to Russia. It’s going to be a big deal.” The summit took place in Alaska, a U.S. state.
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