Trump Ran from the G7 Because of Macron

And Zelensky

On a normal day, when I see headlines like this one—“Trump leaves G7 Summit early because of Macron, Zelensky”—I tend to dismiss them. My reflexive response is always: How do they know for sure? Attribution in political reporting can be murky, and anonymous sources are often used to push someone’s agenda.

According to the Financial Times, “People familiar with the discussions said that his decision to leave was partly due to irritation at French President Emmanuel Macron, who had stopped in Greenland and opposed Trump’s plans to take control of the island, as well as the US president’s lack of interest in meeting Ukrainian President Zelensky.”

I normally would have filed that under noise. But something about this moment felt different. This was the day the world could have taken an almighty turn.

A fork in the road.

Because this G7 meeting had all the ingredients needed to bring Putin’s war machine to its knees. Drop the Russian oil price cap to $45 per barrel. Enforce it properly. Slap secondary sanctions on Chinese, Indian, and Turkish buyers purchasing above the cap. If that had happened, Putin would have had three months—max. His war chest would collapse. His empire would follow, crumbling even faster than the Soviet Union.

On top of this, I had already collected enough receipts before the G7 even began. When I saw Macron stop over in Greenland en route to the G7 meeting in Canada, it caught my attention immediately. I flagged it at the time, and wrote the following—because something about that detour wasn’t just symbolic, it was strategic.

And now, once again, Macron has moved the goalposts for Donald Trump. Just before world leaders gathered for the G7 meeting in Canada, he posted this:

What was the need for that post? One day before the G7 meeting?

On the surface, none. But Macron still went with it.

It’s entirely plausible the Trump team was planning to stir up the Greenland issue again—at the G7 or on its sidelines. With chaos brewing back home, the optics-obsessed Trump operation might have seen “We want Greenland” as a low-cost ploy to dominate headlines and spook the G7 into blinking.

Macron shut it down before it could even take shape. He drew a red line early—and in doing so, deflated a potential distraction balloon.

And here’s the thing: Macron now understands the strategic value of preemption. It prevents surprises. It holds the coalition together. And he’s clearly comfortable stepping into a leadership role.

That’s a good sign.

My way-too-early assumption turned out to be correct. Macron likely knew that Trump was planning to stir up a controversy around Greenland to disrupt the G7. That’s Trump’s playbook—he thrives on shock and awe. His entire strategy depends on creating a spectacle, grabbing headlines, and forcing others to react.

But when someone diffuses the shock element by preempting the move, there’s no awe. And when there’s no awe, the plan collapses. If your entire strategy was built on disruption, and that disruption gets neutralized before it even begins, you’re left flailing. That’s when irritation kicks in. And when Trump gets irritated, he posts things like this on social media:

“Publicity seeking President Emmanuel Macron, of France, mistakenly said that I left the G7 Summit, in Canada, to go back to D.C. to work on a ‘cease fire’ between Israel and Iran. Wrong!”
— President Donald Trump, after bolting from the G7.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

I know there has been a lot of frustration over Macron and other European leaders in general as the perception that they are not doing enough still continues. Let us walk through this one by one.

First, Europe is way ahead of the United States in terms of supporting Ukraine, protecting the democratic world and stopping the Russian imperial war machine. Between January 2025 and March 2025, Europe delivered €19.12 billion aid to Ukraine.

The last time the United States delivered more than €16 billion aid to Ukraine in 3 months…..

Europe isn’t just ahead—it’s miles ahead.

Since the beginning of the war, total European aid to Ukraine has outpaced that of the United States. But more importantly, in the last six months, Washington has barely lifted a finger. As Ukraine faces brutal attritional warfare, the U.S. presence has become more symbolic than strategic.

“He hasn’t done much” is a phrase that’s often thrown at President Macron. But that version of Macron—the one who hedged, delayed, and flirted with negotiation—was from a different era. There was a France before February 2024, not the one after. Just as there was a different Germany before 2023.

Geopolitical responses evolve.

Lines must be redrawn.

So forget the pre-February 2024 Macron. Let’s take a much closer look at the Macron who emerged after that point.

Before then, Ukraine’s only long-range strike options were the British Storm Shadow and the French SCALP missiles. President Biden delayed delivery of ATACMS for far too long—and even when he did authorize them, the numbers were so small Ukraine could count them without using a spreadsheet.

By contrast, it was the British and French long-range weapons that made a decisive difference in Crimea. The strikes on Sevastopol’s naval headquarters, the attacks on Russian warships and submarines—those weren’t miracles. They were made possible by Storm Shadows and SCALPs.

Even now, the dollar value of French assistance appears relatively low—about €6 billion in total. But if you examine the timeline, you’ll see most of that aid was delivered over the past year. And more importantly, France’s impact can’t be measured in euros alone.

Because when it comes to battlefield effectiveness, those Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles delivered results no dollar figure can capture. If you only look at monetary totals, you miss the forest for the trees.

That was a mistake I made. And I still regret it.

Time and again, evidence piled up against the Biden administration—and against its so-called foreign policy genius, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. I should have questioned, much earlier, why the Biden team allowed the May 2022 Lend-Lease bill to expire without using it a single time. Not once.

Then came 2023. The administration allowed nearly €3 billion in Presidential Drawdown Authority to go unused. Aid came to a standstill. And that was the period leading up to the catastrophic loss of Avdiivka.

That’s when I finally woke up.

The United States had been gaming us. Shipping pallets of low-end weapons, parading the dollar total on TV, and calling it “steadfast support for democracy.” But the numbers tell the real story.

• Number of fighter jets delivered: 0

• Number of tanks: 31

• Number of HIMARS launchers: 39

• Number of long-range air defense systems: 2

• Number of ATACMS missiles: possibly fewer than 100

That’s not leadership. I wanted to say something here. But I won’t.

So yes—France’s steady supply of AASM Hammer glide bombs, reportedly over 50 per month, is helping Ukraine in exactly the way it needs. The regular shipment of CAESAR howitzers? Same. And the fact that President Macron calls Zelensky almost every single day—that matters more than any press conference or summit declaration.

This is what real support looks like—sustained, consistent, and tactically aligned. I still want Macron to do more. But at this point, comparing France to the United States is no longer fair. It would be a travesty.

I once made the mistake of focusing too much on the dollar figures. I don’t want you to repeat my mistake. In war, what matters most is impact. And when you judge by impact—not headlines or budgets—the list of people who’ve truly defended the free world becomes very clear.

Here’s my ranking. Top 5. It will evolve. But today, it looks like this:

1. All three Prime Ministers of Great Britain: Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, and Keir Starmer.

2. Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger.

3. President of France, Emmanuel Macron. (Macron’s key contribution now lies in putting out fires before the arsonist can even strike.)

4. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. (Chancellor Merz is headed in the right direction, but it’s still too early to include him here.)

5. Former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

It is not President Joe Biden. And it will never be Donald Trump.

Trump has already done enough damage that no last-minute pivot can repair the hole he’s dug—for Ukraine, for Europe, and for America’s credibility.

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