Under Trump, there is no G7 – only a G1

President Trump moved through the G7 Summit in Alberta like a blowsy uncle swinging by the house for a drink on Thanksgiving on his way to Vegas. He didn’t accomplish much, but, as always, he was the perpetual pot-stirrer in his real-life As The World Turns. He began yesterday by criticizing the G7 for tossing Russia out of the group, “even though I wasn’t in politics then. I was very loud about it.” Fact check: true. This expulsion was a “mistake,” Trump said, adding, “Putin speaks to me, he doesn’t speak to anyone else.”

What was Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni rolling her eyes at in a moment soon to become a GIF? Probably that statement. Almost definitely that statement.

But that was just the canapé, with the actual meal yet to come. After an amusing moment where Trump announced a signed trade deal with British Prime Minister Kier Starmer, dropping several papers out of a leather binder, he blew out of the G7 quickly, like a doctor on the golf course receiving an emergency page.

The White House announced that Trump had to return to Washington, saying he needed to “attend to many important matters.” We can guess, given the headlines, what those matters might have involved, but Trump made it pretty clear when he posted on Truth Social: “Iran should have signed the “deal” I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”

This prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to tell reporters that Trump was leaving to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. “Since they can pressure Israel, things may change.” Trump immediately delivered a slap, the kind of thing Macron is very used to receiving. Pish-posh, Trump said. He’d left Alberta for “something much bigger than that.”
What could be bigger than potential peace in the Middle East? Who knows? But, according to Trump, Macron “always gets it wrong”.

“He has no idea why I am on my way to Washington,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “But it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire.” Take that, France!

And so ended Trump’s visit to an eventful G7 where nothing really happened. He made the maximum amount of noise and reminded the world that, until further notice, he is the Main Character. Under Donald Trump, there is no G7, there is no G8, and there is no G3. It’s Trump’s world; we just live in it. His United States of America is a Group of 1.