(CNN)Xresident Donald Trump tried to explain his agitating approach to life, politics and the rest of the world in a flash of impatienceuring a blustery news conference in France.
"It's the way I negotiate. It's done me well over the years and it's doing even better for the country, I think," he said.
Trump's comment encapsulated thentamed personality that his fellow world leaders are beginning to get used to- and work around after his 29 months in office.
But in a deeper sense, Trump also shed light on fundamental judgments about his tenure that voters must make before the 2020 election.
His political future could rest on whether a sufficient number of Americans decide that the Trumpian tumult of his first term expresses their frustration with the Washington establishment and has delivered the wealth, peace and patriotic pride that he promised in the 2016 campaign.
One big risk is that a majority of voters may simply be exhausted by the cacophony of the Trump era that was on display at the weekend at the G7 summit in France and involves chaos, head-spinning policy reversals, lying as a matter of course, perpetual cultural warfare and widening national divides.
In other words, is all Trump, all the time, "doing even better for the country" as the President insists?
The President's weekend in Biarritz, France, was a classic example of his behavior overseas.
His policy choices on Iran, climate, trade with China and trying to get Russian President Vladimir Putin back into the summit despite the opposition of US allies, left America isolated on the global stage.
Yet his belligerence was also undeniably an expression of US power since foreign leaders who might not be able to live with Trump but can't live without America tried not to annoy him. True to his word, the President has made the world's most powerful nation unpredictable, leaving friends and rivals unsure of what it will do next.
Trump skipped a meeting on global warming- a scientifically proven trend thate has claimed is a Chinese hoax. He made unverifiable claims that China had bowed to his tough rhetoric. He adopted dizzyingly different postures on the trade war. Trump bitterly accused the media of lying when it questioned his narrative of the summit. He indulged his obsession with Barack Obama, slamming the former President on foreign soil in a way that once would have been taboo.
And he made a series of bizarre claims and assertions that left his aides struggling to shape believable explanations