WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Saturday abruptly reversed his plan to hold the next Group of Seven world leaders' meeting at his Doral, Fla., golf resort next year.
The decision announced Thursday to hold the summit at Doral was unprecedented in modern American politics: The president awarded a large no-bid contract to himself. The White House promoted Doral as the single best venue in all of the United States to host the G-7 next June, and the summit would have attracted thousands of guests in the offseason to a resort that is struggling financially.
But with even some Republican allies saying the selection of the Trump property as the venue for a gathering of world leaders was indefensible, Trump announced in a series of three tweets late Saturday that he would look elsewhere.
"I thought I was doing something very good for our Country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 Leaders," he wrote. "It is big, grand, on hundreds of acres, next to Miami International Airport, has tremendous ballrooms & meeting rooms, and each delegation would have ... its own 50 to 70 unit building. Would set up better than other alternatives. I announced that I would be willing to do it at NO PROFIT or, if legally permissible, at ZERO COST to the USA. But, as usual, the Hostile Media & their Democrat Partners went CRAZY!"
The president added, "Therefore, based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider Trump National Doral, Miami, as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020. We will begin the search for another site, including the possibility of Camp David, immediately. Thank you!"
The reversal raises questions about the position of the president's acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who held a news conference Thursday announcing the choice of Doral for the summit. He insisted that his staff had concluded that it was "far and away the best physical facility" in the United States, and that the White House reached that determination after visiting 10 sites across the country.
"I was aware of the political, sort of, criticism that we'd come under for doing it at Doral, which is why I was so surprised when the advance team called back and said that this is the perfect physical location to do this," Mulvaney told reporters.
Trump had been the first administration official to publicly float the selection of his property to host the summit when in August he mentioned that it was on the short-list and praised its facilities and proximity to Miami's airport. His comments, more than a month before the official announcement, drew instant criticism from Democrats, who said it raised concerns that Trump was using the White House to boost his personal finances.
Doral has been struggling in recent years. The property saw its net operating income decline 69% from 2015-17, according to documents that the Trump Organization filed with Miami-Dade County.
Hosting the G-7 would have been a boon for the company, filling the hotel in June, a month when the resort is typically less than 40% full. Tourism in south Florida generally is not as high in the summer as in the winter, in part because of the region's heat and humidity.
However, Trump insisted that he would host the summit at cost, though he refused to disclose financial details.
Trump's mention of Camp David as a potential summit site also raised questions about Mulvaney's news conference because Mulvaney dismissed the government-owned presidential retreat in Maryland as too small and remote. Then-President Barack Obama held the G-7 there in 2012, the last time the leaders gathered in the United States.
"I understand the folks who participated in it hated it and thought it was a miserable place to have the G-7," Mulvaney told reporters, adding, "my understanding is this media didn't like it because you had to drive an hour on a bus to get there either way."
Mulvaney said then that Doral was one of four finalists for the summit, citing an unspecified site in Hawaii and two unspecified sites in Utah. It was unclear if those sites are still under consideration.
Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Trump's reversal Saturday "is a bow to reality, but does not change how astonishing it was that a president ever thought this was appropriate, or that it was something he could get away with."
Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller and Jill Colvin of The Associated Press; and by Philip Rucker and David A. Fahrenthold of The Washington Post.
A Section on 10/20/2019