New Delhi: Pakistanis are ‘second-hand embarrassed’ at the Trump-Sharif bonhomie. They feel the bootlicking is going too far. Some are also trying to look for new identities. They are ashamed to be called Pakistanis.
Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif went to Egypt to attend the signing of the Donald Trump–brokered Gaza peace plan and heaped praise on the US president. If that wasn’t enough, he once again nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, an award the US President seems desperate to receive.
While Sharif may have won Trump’s favour, he clearly seems to have lost respect back home, where citizens are now debating which is worse: “Shehbaz Sharif’s constant and needless flattery of Donald Trump” or the “embarrassment of being a Pakistani with zero self-respect”.
Hardly anyone seems to be holding back in their criticism of Sharif. One X user said he had never seen anyone “flatter and grovel before another country’s president to such an extent”.
It wasn’t just ordinary citizens venting their embarrassment online; even political leaders joined in.
“I see tweets from all over the world taunting Pakistanis over their choice of leaders and their behaviour on the international stage. Let me clarify the confusion; we Pakistanis did NOT elect this lot,” PTI leader Hammad Azhar wrote on X.
Calling it a “clarification from Pakistanis”, he added: “The comical scenes & disgusting sycophancy you are witnessing is from this same puppet lot. And trust me, we are all as outraged and embarrassed as all of you. But it’s not long now before we send them packing & restore democracy & rule of law. Keep following the events in Pakistan.”
Former Pakistani senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan shared a couplet in Urdu, “If someone crosses the limits of flattery, there is a limit to shamelessness and servitude too.”
Then came the quintessential humour. Many Pakistanis joked that this sudden turnabout in geopolitical relations must be the result of that “taweez” — the amulet godmen give you to ensure undying love.
“I want the taweez that Hafiz sahab did for ‘mehboob apk qadmoun mein’,” X user Yamina said.
Analyst Hussain Nadim shared an old post from April in which Trump mentioned how countries were calling him up and “kissing his a**”, captioning it: “No confusion left which country Trump was referring to here…”
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‘Major diplomatic gain’
However, there were a few praises too. Economist Yousuf Nazar called it “a change in fortunes” from the Imran Khan-era.
“You can criticise Shehbaz Sharif as much as you like but he clearly stole the show at the peace summit in Egypt. Trump was full of praise for Pakistan. What a huge change in fortunes from Biden days when he refused to make even a phone call to Pakistani PM Imran, who foolishly supported the regressive Taliban regime,” he wrote on X.
Nazar added that he didn’t agree with those criticising Sharif for praising Trump, arguing that the Pakistani government was acting in self-interest.
“A big advantage of dramatically improved US-Pakistan ties is that Pakistan has been de-hyphenated with extremism and terrorism. This is major diplomatic gain whether we like the hybrid set-up or not,” the economist said.
Earlier in June, just days after Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir was hosted at the White House, Islamabad formally nominated Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, crediting his “decisive diplomatic intervention” during Operation Sindoor.
An X user referenced this move with a meme from the Bollywood film 3 Idiots where the character says: “It is being uttered by him, but the words are mine”, with the caption: “Someone in Pindi right now”.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)