October 17: On This Day In 2019
Some might call it extreme chutzpah, but in TrumpWorld it’s just the day-to-day grift.
The location of the annual G7 meeting rotates among the participating seven countries. 2020 was our turn to host. Our president gets to pick the site, and often they want to show off a particular American highlight. So, for example, Reagan chose Colonial Williamsburg, Obama chose Camp David, and Ford chose Puerto Rico.
OTDI 2019, Trump informed leaders of the G7 nations that their summit the next year would be held at... his personal Doral golf resort in Florida. He picked his own house because that would be an easy way to get rich, with millions in fees and charges getting paid to directly to his club.
And just think of the incredible worldwide publicity Doral would earn from this! Absolutely unmatchable! What an opportunity!!!
(Note, of course, Trump had used similar gambits – and brought in big bucks – many times before. He did this with the leaders of Japan and others, with his own VP in Ireland, and with his golf course in the UK for starters.)
Here’s how Vox summarized this attempt: “Trump’s move to host the G7 at his Doral resort takes self-dealing to new levels. The corruption is becoming more and more brazen.”
Vanity Fair was more specific: “Trump Leans Into Corruption, Decides to Host G7 at Trump Doral. Time to prop up his foundering resort with some sweet emoluments-violating cash.”
We, though, quibble with how Rolling Stone summarized it: “Fresh Off Denouncing Bidens’ ‘Corruption,’ Trump Chooses Own Resort to Host Government Meeting of Global Leaders. We've reached a new low in banana Republicanism.” (We quibble because there were still plenty of “new lows” still to come.)
We’ll give the last word on this to Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He noted simply: “This is unbelievable!”
Finally, even Donald Trump had to cave after such scalding bipartisan criticism. He tweeted: “Based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider (my club) as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020.” He eventually settled on Camp David instead.
Unfortunately, when 2020 arrived, Covid began making meetings difficult. But Trump ignored the deadly threat and still begged other leaders to hop on a plane for his in-person G7 summit that March, just weeks into the global pandemic.
Taking the advice from actual health experts, rather than from Donald Trump, the other world leaders refused to come meet him. Still, there's Zoom, right? But in the end, Trump wasn’t even able to cobble together his summit online. The whole concept of having even a videoconference summit simply collapsed that year under his wretched mismanagement.
Question: Isn’t America the nation that knows how to Get Stuff Done? Doesn’t American Ingenuity always figure out a way, in the face of great odds? Instead, we became the first country to abdicate the hosting honor. The meeting simply…didn’t happen. For the first time ever. When the world was particularly looking to the “leading” nations to skillfully steer the planet through difficult times, Trump failed.
Timely update from yesterday's OTDI:
Even though we here at OTDI have covered 366 Trumpian incidents, and we thought we'd seen it all...even we were shocked by what Rachel Maddow and MSNBC revealed last night. As noted yesterday, Trump had vowed to "go after" Stormy Daniels, and later got convicted on 34 felony counts related to his payment of $130K in hush money to her. Well now, in 2024, instead of "going after" her...he recently offered her another $600K+ to keep quiet during this campaign! Amazing, right? Btw, if his own wife doesn't care if Donald goes to prison for all this, why should we?
Dive Deeper
USA Today opinion column on the Trumpian grift
Vanity Fair’s take on Trump's take
Rolling Stone’s review of the grift
Vox too has the coverage
Politico reports on Trump’s reversal
On This Day In The Trump Administration: Trump tries to host G7 at Doral; corruption