#Winners and #Losers - The G20 Files

The Week in Politicians Visiting Beaches

Winner: Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu—Narendra Modi visited Israel this week, becoming the first sitting Indian Prime Minister to do so. Bibi pulled out all the stops; let’s just say that taking a first date to the beach is a real power move. #WhenBibiMetModi

Loser: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie—the man was done in politics long before this weekend’s 4th of July beach scandal, but the obliviousness of the move remains astonishing. Now he gets to live on forever in memes, which is the worst fate of all.

The Week in Hamburg

Winner: Saudi Arabia—the Trump team didn’t book a hotel in time for the G20 meeting; rumor has it they wanted to stay at the Four Seasons, but the hotel was claimed by the Saudis. The kicker? King Salman didn’t even attend, sending his finance minister instead. #BrotherCanYouSpareARoom

Loser: G20s, G7s, G8s—conferences like these are nothing more than glorified photo ops at this point. People are more interested with how handshakes play out than what’s actually being hashed out in closed-door meetings. Strip away the pomp and circumstance, and you’re left with a G-Zero. #AndSnarkyTweets

The Week in Awkward Firsts

Winner: The Afghan Robotics Team—for reasons that still remain unclear, an all-girl team from Afghanistan was denied visas by the State Department for the inaugural FIRST Global challenge, a robotics competition for young people from around the world. The team responded by getting back to work building robots. #Perseverance

Loser: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—for the first time ever, Assad will be featured on a 2,000 Syrian pound bill, roughly worth $4. Being featured on a country’s currency is usually a great honor, but the fact that the note had to be issued at all—the highest valued Syrian note issued yet—is actually a sign of economic distress. #ChumpChange

The Week in Protests

Winner: Turkish protestors—thousands are marching the 280 miles from Ankara to Istanbul to protest Erdogan’s crackdown on democratic values. Doing so puts Erdogan in a bind; repress the protestors and invite even more protests, or leave them alone and have them criticize the notoriously thin-skinned Erdogan with the whole world watching. #ProtestsDoneRight

Loser: G20 protestors—G20 protestors showed up in huge numbers and got creative with the proceedings, with some even dressing as zombies—or maybe extras in a Michael Jackson video. Too bad it didn’t make an iota of difference. #FunkOfFortyThousandYears

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Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, foreign affairs columnist at TIME and Global Research Professor at New York University. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.