Donald Trump is facing some heat Thursday after he went against presidential norms by saluting a North Korean general.

“I’m not trying to be gratuitous or unfair but isn’t saluting a General from an enemy military sort of a big deal?” tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

North Korea’s state news channel on Thursday was the first to broadcast a 42-minute video from Trump’s meeting this week with Kim Jong Un. In a clip shared by the BBC, Trump is shown meeting various North Korean officials, including a North Korean military general.

The general first salutes Trump, to which the president salutes back, before shaking his hand. Kim is seen smiling in the background.

“To no one’s surprise, North Korea used our President for their propaganda campaign,” tweeted Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), calling it “nauseating” to see the salute after Trump had just bashed traditional U.S. allies days earlier over trade disputes at a G-7 meeting.

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Indeed, conservatives lambasted Obama several times early in his presidency when he bowed to two foreign leaders.

First, Obama faced blowback in 2009 after he bowed to Emperor Akihito during his first visit to Japan. Conservatives said the move displayed weakness from the U.S. on the world stage.

Obama was also criticized later that year for bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Trump in 2012 tweeted about Obama’s interaction with Abdullah: “do we still want a President who bows to Saudis and lets OPEC rip us off?”

On Thursday, many on the left pointed to these incidents as evidence that Obama faced a double standard, and that conservatives are hypocritical for defending Trump’s salute.

However, Ned Price, an Obama-era White House official and CIA analyst who left government work shortly after Trump’s inauguration, argued that these situations shouldn’t be compared. A president should always know the proper protocol when interacting with foreign military officials, he said.

“We can be outraged that Trump saluted a North Korean general without invoking the ‘if Obama did it‘ argument,” Price wrote on Twitter. “Here’s the truth: Neither Obama nor any other American President would’ve done this. Like so much else today, it’s uniquely Trumpian and abhorrent.”