Belgium’s Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot has summoned the US ambassador to the country, Bill White, after the diplomat targeted Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke on social media.
Targeting a member of the government is “unacceptable,” Prévot said after White mocked Vandenbroucke on Instagram.
According to local media, the post followed Vandenbroucke’s push for stricter health warnings on alcohol. Belga reported that producers would have to use wording such as “alcohol damages your health,” rather than the current formula that “alcohol abuse damages your health.”
On Instagram, White shared an AI-generated image of Vandenbroucke and asked, “Who’s the biggest LOSER in Belgium?” The image mocked the new warning by suggesting the minister himself “damages every form of joy in life.”
“It is unacceptable for an ambassador accredited in Belgium to target a member of our government in this way,” Prévot was quoted as saying. He said he would call White in again in the coming days. The ambassador had already been summoned earlier this year over other controversial remarks.
The tougher alcohol warnings have become a political fight in Belgium. Brewers and other producers oppose the change and have launched a campaign against it.
White, no stranger to controversy, has taken the opposite side from Vandenbroucke and has been in dispute with him for months.
In response, Conner Rousseau, leader of Vooruit, the Flemish social democratic party, hit back at the US diplomat, calling him a “funny guy” who “knows nothing about healthcare” and “only repeats what daddy Trump says.”
White, a Republican from New York and a Trump loyalist, worked in his family’s restaurant and real estate businesses before joining the Intrepid organization in 1992, the family-linked venture that runs the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.
