SICILY – After two days of shuffling blank papers and waving shiny objects, heads of state from G7 countries have begun preparing for the actual summit scheduled to commence after Donald Trump’s Saturday evening departure.
“It was a nice mental break, I guess, but we really need to get down to the adult stuff now,” Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni told a crowd of reporters after wrapping up a session on which “Paw Patrol” characters should be featured on the Mar-A-Lago menus.
Trump arrived in the Sicilian resort town of Taormina on Friday directly from Brussels, where he marked his first NATO meeting by challenging German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a game of “Freedom Chugs.” He then asked the Belgian Prime Minister if brussels sprouts were related to Russell Brand, and repeatedly reminded British PM Theresa May to “tell me when NATO gets here.”
The White House defended Trump’s odd behaviour, claiming that the president was not used to being in a place so far outside the Russian sphere of influence.
Since arriving in Sicily, Trump has spent much of his time asking his fellow world leaders how much they pay for their haircuts, and putting quarters into a handshake video game that turned out to be French President Emmanuel Macron.
“The takeaway here is that nothing got done, and that’s really the best case scenario,” said Gentiloni. “It was actually nice to just kick back for a few days, play some musical overstuffed chairs, and pretend like nothing you do has any life-or-death consequences for real people anywhere in the world.”
As Trump’s departure approached, the remaining diplomats joined him in signing the guest book as they pretended to leave, each penning a message below Trump’s entry, “Lousy service, no tip.”
