Welcome to Monday’s installment of Washington Secrets. Donald Trump has just landed on French soil, so we look at whether his G7 hosts can give him the European edition of the “Trump Show” he so dearly wants, and whether they can do better than the Canadian version last year (with their well-meaning but worthy meetings). Plus, we watched the UFC extravaganza (well, part of it — there’s a World Cup on you know) and tried to decode it for you…
The Canadians had it all worked out. The joint communique had been ditched to avoid squabbling over words, the meetings had been shortened, and Donald Trump had been offered a chance to play one of the most spectacular golf courses in the world.
It wasn’t enough.
Halfway through a session on wildfires at the 2025 G7 summit outside Calgary last year, Trump decided he had enough, asking aides why he had to sit through such mind-numbing briefings. He left that night, ditching plans for a second day at the summit. (He claimed it was because of conflict in the Middle East, but Secrets knows better.)
This week, it is Emmanuel Macron and his French government who are hosting G7 leaders. And he has pulled out his highest honor for Trump, in the form of a private dinner amid the glittering, golden grandeur of the Palace of Versailles, the sumptuous residence of the Sun King Louis XIV.
The special treatment meant Trump ended weeks of doubt by confirming his attendance only 11 days ago. But a G7 diplomat told Secrets Macron must still be on his best behavior if he wants a successful summit without an early exit.
He must cast aside his usual French tendency to pick a fight with the American leader.
“President Macron would do well to overcome his every instinct: this is a moment to forgo customary Macronian grandstanding and host a special edition of the Trump Show,” the diplomat said.
“With relations strained over European responses to the Strait of Hormuz and anxious eyes on the Ankara NATO summit, this is an opportunity for European leaders to show they are serious about defending their own shores,” the diplomat added. “Honoring the Emperor in the grandeur of Versailles might aid the mood.”
It is a rare honor, last afforded to King Charles III and Queen Camilla, who were entertained in the Hall of Mirrors.
The good news for Macron is that the president was already in a good mood before leaving American soil. He announced a deal with Iran on Sunday and left the White House after celebrating his 80th birthday with an Ultimate Fighting Championship spectacular on the South Lawn.
Alex Gray, a key national security official in Trump’s first term and now chief executive of American Global Strategies, said the president arrived with a much-improved hand.
“I think the president has reset some of the strategic balance,” Gray said. “He’s taken away the No. 1 issue that they were complaining about, which is the straits. He going into this with, I think, a mandate in some ways to pursue a pretty aggressive Middle Eastern transformation agenda.”
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That may mean energy directed at trade, tech regulations in the European Union, and fresh emphasis on the Abraham Accords, Gray added. Senior administration officials were already promising “candid” conversations at the G7 ahead of the Iran announcement.
“For decades, we’ve had issues not just in foreign policy but on trade and economics, and the way we approach … in this administration, as we talk about these issues, we’re trying to fix persistent problems,” said one official. “We’re not afraid to have these hard conversations.”
Macron and Trump developed early chemistry after both taking power in 2017. Headlines about their “bromance” have faded in the past year, however, as Macron led European resistance to the president’s plans for Greenland, the Gaza Board of Peace, and the war in Iran.
Gray said Trump knew how to be a gracious guest. It was up to Macron to decide how the G7 summit unfolded.
“What most American presidents run into with France is a deep ingrained stream of strategic thought going back to [Charles] de Gaulle, that says having distance from the Americans is strategically advantageous,” he said.
“Macron has an extraordinarily unsuccessful foreign policy, and I think the easiest thing for someone from that tradition to do is to try and unite his domestic constituency and other Europeans around opposition to an American president.”
The French have already shifted the timetable, moving the summit a day later to accommodate Trump’s UFC extravaganza. Now they must work to ensure it doesn’t end a day early.
Octagon meets Oval
Commentators anchored part of the event from the Green Room, sitting beneath a portrait of first lady Edith Roosevelt. Fighters warmed up in the splendor of the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which had been converted into a makeshift locker room for the night.
UFC night at the White House was the most spectacular of spectaculars, even by the extraordinary standards of the producer-in-chief.
Billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and David Ellison rubbed shoulders with Cabinet secretaries and ambassadors on the South Lawn, beneath an extraordinary steel arch named “The Claw.” At least another 75,000 people watched the fights from the Ellipse, the park beyond the White House walls.
HERE’S WHO ATTENDED THE UFC FREEDOM 250 CAGE MATCH
They watched a video of the history of the White House and how it was built by President John Adams.
“And the White House became a statement to the world,” intoned the compere, “That this new democracy was here to stay.”
And then tattooed men beat seven bells out of each other.
This was not Ali versus Frazier. In one of the heavyweight bouts, the two contenders were out on their feet after the first round, reeling as they threw wild punches that failed to connect.
But if you wanted a metaphor for Trump’s America, it was all there in one giant Rorschach test.
It was a dumbing down of a sacred part of American democracy, a lowest-common-denominator event that made fools of us all. And the sort of thuggish night where Josh Hokit, one of the most clownish of fighters, ended an interview by insulting a previous resident of the White House: “Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right, America?”
On the other hand, it was a reclaiming of the “people’s house” from the elite. A breaking of norms. A night when ordinary men and women could enjoy a light show and a flyover. A night when marking the 250th anniversary meant celebrating the unconventional, can-do spirit of a nation that fostered democracy in its own, rough-hewn way after shrugging off its colonial shackles.
It could have been an awkward evening for Sir Christian Turner, the British ambassador. But he managed to straddle all possibilities with his summary of the evening on social media. “Celebrating 250 the American way,” he posted.
Quite so.
Flex of the day
Every journalist in D.C. has the phone number of the president. Last week, I listened to a reporter on the radio admit that her interview with Trump lasted less than a minute. What’s the point in calling him?
So this line in today’s New York Times story is noteworthy.
“In a 28-minute phone conversation that Mr. Trump initiated from the White House residence …”
Veteran correspondent David Sanger doesn’t call the president. The president calls him.
Lunchtime reading
They tried to catch a predator. They trapped themselves instead: This is like something out of one of Stephen King’s works of science fiction. Terrifying look at how content creators find clicks in vigilantism.
The 2028 Democratic ticket may already be taking shape: Neither of these figures is top of the betting markets, but both would fulfill David Axelrod’s axiom that the country elects “remedies, not replicas” of its outgoing president.
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