The Guardian on Trump in Biarritz:

Senior aides in Donald Trump’s entourage have accused the G7 host and French president, Emmanuel Macron, of seeking to embarrass his US counterpart by making the summit focus on “niche issues” such as climate change, according to multiple US media reports.

Good scare quotes but there should be more of them, or else GIFs of scorn and derision.

Can we focus for just a second? CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT A NICHE ISSUE.

Not in any sense. Climate change is making the planet less inhabitable for most mammals, fish, birds, insects, and plants right now and it’s getting worse all the time, at a much faster clip than was predicted even a few years ago. It’s getting much worse much sooner than anyone thought, and that means for all of us, so how can that possibly be a “niche” issue? How stupid are these “senior aides”?

The spark for the fuse appeared to be lunch. Macron whisked the US president away for an impromptu meal for two on an oceanfront terrace at the Hotel du Palais. Trump initially appeared frosty but later called it “the best meeting we have yet had”.

That probably means he liked the dessert.

Senior administration officials quoted by the New York Times among others were not so sure, complaining the summit had moved from core issues such as global economics and trade to “niche issues” such as climate change, gender equality and development in Africa. The topics were chosen to appeal to Macron supporters, and even to embarrass Trump, who pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord, they said, as protesters marched the streets of the French city calling for action to tackle the fires ravaging the Amazon rainforest.

I guess these senior aides think they will go on being able to eat and drive their cars and live in their big houses even after all the peasants have starved to death? Because the food and fuel and police protection will be provided by Market Magic or The Ghost of Ayn Rand or careful prudent saving?

“It’s our view that with France trying to drive these other issues outside of global economics, national security and trade, they’re trying to fracture the G7,” one official told White House reporter Gabby Orr.

Trade is everything! Trade is God! Trade soars free of the earthly realities of growing seasons and people who know how to plant and harvest! Shut your eyes and just keep trading!

Days earlier, Larry Kudlow, the director of the White House’s national economic council, criticised Macron’s decision to ditch the usual consensus communique at the end of the summit in favour of “coalitions’ of like-minded states. “These coalitions produce politically correct bromides such as calls to ban everything from straws to fossil fuels,” he said in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

Sure, Larry, just keep calling it politically correct while the forests vanish and the tundra burns and Greenland melts and suddenly the food supply is nowhere to be found. That’ll work.