WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. will host next year’s Group of 20 summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida, arguing it was “the best location” for the high-stakes international gathering but insisting his family’s business “will not make any money on it.”
In his first term, Trump tried to host a separate global summit at the club, but backed down after criticism from his own party about the propriety of doing so. Now, though, Trump rarely travels domestically without golfing at or staying in properties bearing his name and has faced very little political blowback.
Trump’s sons have taken over running the Trump Organization while their father is in the White House. But the president has nonetheless prided himself in blurring the line between domestic and global policy and generating profits for the Trump brand.
He’s actively promoted his $TRUMP meme coin and even hosted the top 220 investors in it for a swanky dinner in May at his golf property in Virginia. The president made his first foreign trip to Saudi Arabia, after his sons crisscrossed the region drumming up business for the family’s other cryptocurrency ventures. Trump also went to Scotland to inaugurate his new golf course there.
The G20 is made up of some of the world’s major economies, the European Union and the African Union. Hosting the G20 at Doral would be an especially striking example of using the presidency to enrich his family, but Trump wasted little time defending it.