Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ruffled a few feathers this week by calling everyone who offended him a Nazi, starting with the Germans and winding his way over to the Netherlands. But as Godwin’s Law decrees, invoking the Nazis is the easy way out for an insulter. Here are a few world leaders who took the time to make a slightly more creative insult.
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo. Last week, Poland’s current government tried to block a former Polish prime minister from renewing his term in a senior EU position. The government’s objections were overruled by the rest of the EU’s leaders, including French President Francois Hollande, who warned the EU could withhold funds from Poland if they didn’t stop pursuing reforms perceived as anti-liberal. The Polish PM responded by lashing out at Hollande’s approval ratings: “Am I supposed to take seriously the blackmail of a president who has a 4 percent approval rating and who soon won't be president?”
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez. Venezuela’s government is projecting. In this case, it was targeting Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who described Venezuela as a “big problem” in Latin America in a speech earlier this month. “He goes round, poor thing, with my respect because he is an elderly man, [like] a good dog who wags its tail at the empire and asks for an intervention in Venezuela. He’s alone, going round like a crazy man, with no one paying attention.”