Parsing the G7 summit: triumph for Trump or Trudeau or just chaos?

Six of the G7 leaders who met at Charlevoix, Québec, this weekend thought it was a good meeting. As everyone who reads Dilbert knows, if the point of the meeting is to get together around a table (preferably at a luxury resort) and have a good yak, a meeting which doesn't end in mayhem is "good", even though nothing is actually accomplished.

POTUS seems to be obsessed with accomplishing something, so he doesn't agree that the meeting was a success. He came late and withdrew early [Huh? Ed.] thus avoiding most of Canuck Prime Minister "Junior" Trudeau's agenda for the gabfest. Saving the whales, keeping the earth from burning up and improving the miserable lives of girl children don't interest Mr Trump very much. He wanted to talk business -- trade and tariffs -- but the Euroweenies and Canuck Liberals aren't interested in those things. See "MAGA to MAAA - Walt explains President Trump's 'trade war' strategy", WWW 1/6/18.

Reuters got an excellent picture which sums up the tenor of the talks. Six friends and a stranger, but when the stranger is the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, what difference does it make? What this picture really needs, though, is a caption. There are already hundreds of memes floating around in cyberspace, but I thought I'd add a couple more.

Note from Ed.: OK, it's Monday morning so we have to make allowances, but honestly, I think Walt's captions are kind of lame. Surely some of our readers can do better? E-mail your suggestions to me at the usual address and we'll post a couple of good ones... if there are any.

Footnote: After his abrupt departure from the meeting, POTUS lobbed a grenade at the assembled globalists and progressives (especially "Mr Socks") by walking back his agreement to a group statement on trade, complaining that he had been blindsided by M Trudeau's criticism of his tariff threats at the summit-ending news conference. As he flew from Canada to Singapore Saturday night, POTUS vented his wrath on Twitter. Among other things, he called Junior "weak" and "dishonest", something Canucks have known since shortly after he took office, but nevertheless found a tad insulting, eh.