Donald Trump did himself a big favor when he chose his own Doral resort to host next year's G-7 summit. The story coming out of the Trump White House is that Trump will hardly make any money at all, and “Doral was far and away the best physical facility for this meeting,” according to acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. In fact, “It’s almost like they built this facility to host this type of event.” The White House supposedly looked at 10 facilities before choosing the one owned by the president to host a major international diplomatic event, but it’s giving no explanation for why it eliminated the two venues that most recently hosted the G-7 in the U.S.: Camp David, which the government owns, and Sea Island, Georgia. Or any other venue in the entire country not owned by Trump.
Oh, wait. We all already know the explanation. Trump wants more money and attention for his club, emoluments clause of the Constitution be damned.
The Trump National Doral Miami provides Trump “more revenue than any other hotel or golf club,” The Washington Post reports. “Since 2015, however, the 643-room club’s revenue and profits have nose-dived, according to figures that the Trump Organization provided to Miami-Dade County last year.” According to a Trump Organization tax consultant, in fact, Trump Doral was “severely underperforming” other area resorts.
And now this “severely underperforming” resort will get massive international media exposure as it hosts world leaders—eight of them in a hotel with two presidential suites. (Reminder: “It’s almost like they built this facility to host this type of event.”) The summit will fill the property at a time of year when it has been less than 40% full in recent years, thanks in large part to Miami’s hot, sticky weather, but also presumably to that whole “severely underperforming” thing. The international media exposure could backlash, though, if the G-7 guests are met with the same kind of disgusting health code violations that have plagued the resort.
Either way, Team Trump is assuring us that none of this will mean that Trump is profiting off of his own decision. We’re just supposed to trust them on that, though: “If you want to see our paper on how we did [the selection process], the answer is absolutely not,” Mulvaney said, and Eric Trump refused to answer questions on exactly how the not-profiting process would work.