Donald Trump, 80, has gotten himself into a tangle trying to use a chair.
The octogenarian president was sitting down for a meeting with tech and world leaders at the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, where various talks were held among leaders of member countries Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.K., as well as other world and industry leaders.
As Trump took his seat Wednesday between OpenAI boss Sam Altman and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, however, he was confronted with an unexpected crisis: His seat was too low.
Despite his best efforts, the billionaire was unable to rectify his low-riding position and instead made a fuss.
“Did you get it up?” Trump could be heard saying, with the microphone still on, having slapped Altman’s arm and pointing down at the mechanism of his seat, seemingly demanding assistance.
“Look at yourself in a picture, and you say, ‘What happened? What happened?’ I had the lowest chair in the whole room,” Trump was picked up saying.
Fortunately for Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stepped in to save the day.
“Donald, Donald, Donald. I’ve got the general’s chair,” he said.
“You know what, it’s the U.N.,” Carney continued, giving Trump his chair. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”
“That’s funny. That’s very funny,” Trump said before adding, “Oh, that’s much better,” taking Carney’s chair without hesitation, chuckling to himself. Across the room, French President Emmanuel Macron was seen talking, undisturbed by Trump’s inconvenience.
Trump was previously incensed by a faulty escalator at a U.N. summit in September that stopped as he and first lady Melania were stepping onto it.
“If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would’ve fallen,” Trump said during a speech to the summit last year.
He took a less humorous approach on Truth Social the following day in a furious 357-word screed, saying, “A REAL DISGRACE took place at the United Nations.”
He laid into what he called a “triple sabotage,” seemingly attacking the global cooperation organization over “not one, not two, but three very sinister events!”
He also suffered from a faulty microphone in that instance. “I immediately thought to myself, ‘Wow, first the escalator event, and now a bad teleprompter. What kind of a place is this?’”
His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said afterward, “If someone at the U.N. intentionally stopped the escalator as the president and first lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately.”
