France Reschedules Entire G7 Summit To Avoid Conflicting With Trump's Birthday Cage Fight, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That An Alliance Of Democracies Was Still Keeping Its Own Calendar

The Filing

PARIS. The government of France confirmed Friday that it had moved the annual Group of Seven summit, the yearly gathering of the leaders of the world's wealthiest industrial democracies, by one day in each direction so that the meeting would no longer overlap with President Donald J. Trump's 80th birthday, an occasion the President intends to mark by staging a professional cage fight on the South Lawn of the White House.

The summit, to be hosted in the lakeside spa town of Évian-les-Bains, had originally been scheduled for June 14 through June 16. June 14 is the President's birthday. It is also the date on which the White House has announced it will erect a regulation octagon and several thousand seats on the grounds of the executive mansion for an Ultimate Fighting Championship event. Rather than ask the President to choose between hosting a martial arts card and meeting the heads of allied governments, France elected to relocate the summit of the free world to June 15 through June 17.

The office of President Emmanuel Macron, in a statement that did not mention the fight, described the new dates as "the result of our consultations with G7 partners." Asked directly about the change, a White House official offered the fuller account. "As the leader of the free world, our partners believed that President Trump's attendance at the G7 Summit was essential," the official said. "They kindly shifted dates to accommodate the U.S. President's schedule."

The President first disclosed his birthday plans last October. "On June 14 next year, we're gonna have a big UFC fight at the White House, right at the White House, on the grounds of the White House," he told an audience at Naval Station Norfolk. UFC chief executive Dana White later confirmed that the logistics had been finalized, telling interviewers that organizers expected roughly 5,000 spectators on the lawn itself and as many as 85,000 across the street on the Ellipse, with the fighters scheduled to walk from the Oval Office to the cage.

With the calendar resolved, the six other member governments proceeded to rearrange their own heads of state, security details, and traveling press corps around the President's birthday, a process officials in several capitals declined to characterize on the record. The Group of Seven, founded in the 1970s to coordinate the response of the leading democracies to global economic crises, will now convene on the first available days that do not require the American President to leave his own party early.

At press time, the remaining members of the alliance were quietly reviewing the President's calendar for the balance of the year to confirm that no further scheduling conflicts existed.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, whose personal birthday celebration took precedence over a summit of the world's leading democracies, with his attendance recast as a favor the allies were grateful to be permitted to grant.
§The administration's strongman branding, advanced by the spectacle of six allied governments publicly rearranging an international summit to suit the schedule of one leader.
§Dana White, the UFC, and parent company TKO Group Holdings, handed the White House grounds as a venue and the President's birthday as a global marketing event.
§President Emmanuel Macron and the host government, spared the indignity of an empty American chair, at the cost of conceding that the alliance now sets its calendar around Washington's domestic festivities.
§Vladimir Putin and authoritarian leaders generally, who gain further evidence that the democratic bloc organizes itself around the moods and milestones of a single man.
§Future U.S. presidents, who inherit the precedent that allied summits may be scheduled, and rescheduled, around a president's personal celebrations.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment