Why did Trump go unchallenged at the G7 this year?

Another G7 passes and with it another chance to nudge the world in a different direction. Unlike other years, however, this summit wasn’t about big ideas or even bigger issues. This was all about the bloody enormous elephant in the room…

The G7’s primary goal appeared to be avoiding triggering the American President who arrived in Biarritz off the back of the wildest week of his rolling psychosis of a presidency. I wrote last week for Reaction, suggesting that it was pointless analysing Trump’s sudden urge to buy Greenland. Another outrage was certain to follow and so it proved. It took only a couple of hours before he’d proclaimed himself “King of Israel” and “The Chosen One”. Then came wild words (and tariffs) aimed at China. And if that wasn’t crazy enough for you, there was the little matter of nuking hurricanes. Trump denied this last one but Jonathan Swan, one of Axios’ go-to guys for White House gossip, doubled down, tweeting that Trump “stands by every word.” Either the president is lying or he has serious enemies in the White House. Neither speaks well about the Leader of the Free World.

Whatever was achieved at the G7 was there in the lack of overt challenges to the Trumpian world view. This was collective paraesthesia. This time there would be no hostile words launched from a departing Air Force One. Instead, we had the most lowkey of high-profile weekends as world leaders smiled, nodded, exchanged meaningful words in private, but, ultimately, did nothing. Fifteen million was handed to Jair Bolsonaro, President of Brazil. Bolsonaro promptly handed it back but the whole charade was thematically consistent with the summit. Trump, meanwhile, was given space, especially on Monday morning when he didn’t attend the meeting on climate change. Allowances made. Nod. Smile. Photo opportunity.

It was telling that even Boris Johnson didn’t entirely throw himself behind the President. The optics of Johnson standing on the extreme far left of the group photo might speak about a pre/post Brexit UK being alone in the world but Johnson enjoyed a cagey weekend. At home, he is engaged in a phoney war in which he throws money around like the most moderate and socially liberal Tory Prime Minister since… well, Tony Blair… except, of course, around the matter of Brexit. It’s important for Johnson that Brexit is sold as a certainty. If Brexit is thwarted, Tories should have shown enough ambition to curtail Farage in a general election. Yet, even given those dynamics, Johnson wasn’t ready to admit that a trade deal would be done that quickly. “US-UK Trade Deal is Done” proclaimed The Sunday Express, reflecting Trump’s language but very little of the political reality. Johnson is no fool, even if his lecture on Melton Mowbray pork pies suggests otherwise. Even at his most optimistic, he must know that Trump doesn’t speak for Congress and Nancy Pelosi has said that no trade deal will pass through the House until the gnarly problem of Ireland’s border is solved.

It’s that reality that leaders acknowledged in their quiet way. When Trump speaks, he speaks of leading in polls and winning the next election. In his world, China capitulates to strong arm tactics and he can trust the world of Vladimir Putin, who was wrongly kicked out of the G8 because he outsmarted Obama. He believes that trade deals are a gift of the President and to insult the man is to insult the nation. None of which is real.

Nod to placate him. Meanwhile, back in the real world, Trump is being challenged for the Republican nomination by Joe Walsh, the former Republican congressman who, in his time, has almost been as outrageous as Trump. Unlike Trump, Walsh this week admitted to saying “racist things on Twitter”. Rational moderate conservative alternative to Trump he might not be but it’s a sign of how far things have gone when Walsh admits “we’ve got a guy in the White House who is unfit, completely unfit to be president”. Even members of the former Tea Party recognise how damaging Trump is to their brand. The least ideological politician in living memory is tarring an ideology with his peculiar form of madness.

There’s very little chance that Walsh – or any of the other two or three challengers who might emerge – will win but they do represent the many in the Republican Party who have little faith in The Donald. It represents an emerging political landscape in which the next election won’t be won or lost on issues but on dislodging the incumbent from the White House. Republicans rightly fear a wipe out in 2020 and, in a strange way, the largesse that world leaders showed this year speaks directly to that. One more year, they seemed to say. Let’s reassess things after the American people have spoken.