Donald Trump walked into the final day of the G7 nearly an hour late and announced "I'm the boss." The room laughed. Not with him. At him.
Macron, the actual host, had already kicked things off, then welcomed the latecomer with a polite "How are you?" the way you'd humor an uncle who wandered in halfway through dinner.
A day earlier, a live microphone caught Macron leaning into Zelensky and confiding that the leaders had just had a "difficult discussion" with Trump.
Difficult. That's diplomat for exhausting.
This is the whole gap. Trump sells himself as the dealmaker, the closer, the guy from the boardroom show who points and fires people.
In his head he's still hosting "The Apprentice." In the room, the grown-ups are quietly working around him, scheduling the meetings he forgets to schedule, smoothing the messes, waiting for him to sit down.
And the deals? He flew into Evian waving a memorandum with Iran like a trophy. Then he admitted it isn't even final, and if Tehran misbehaves he'll go right back to "dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head."
Ask him why the same leaders gossiping about him on hot mics were suddenly clapping for his Iran announcement, and he tells reporters they've realized he was right and now "all of a sudden they all want to be involved."
They don't think you were right. They're managing you.
There's a famous old photo of Trump at a G7 2018, arms crossed, while Merkel and a half-circle of leaders lean over a table at him like parents staging an intervention.
Nothing has changed except the year. He still shows up late, still demands the center of the frame, still confuses being tolerated for being respected.
A boss is someone people follow because they trust his judgment. What Trump has is a room of people who learned to schedule around his moods, flatter the deal so he stays in his chair, and say "difficult" only when the mic is off.
You don't do that to your boss. You do that to a liability.
nypost.com
