WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump has awarded the 2020 Group of Seven summit of world leaders to his own private company, scheduling the summit for June at his Trump National Doral golf resort outside Miami, the White House announced on Thursday.
The G-7 summit draws hundreds of diplomats, journalists and security personnel, as well as a worldwide spotlight.
Trump bought Doral, a golf resort, in 2012.
The announcement that the president's own club was chosen as the site of an international summit comes as Trump is in the midst of twin crises -- a hasty American retreat in northern Syria and an impeachment inquiry in Congress.
"Doral was far and away the best physical facility for this meeting," acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said in announcing the decision. He said that the administration examined 10 sites before choosing this one. Mulvaney quoted an anonymous site-selection official as saying, "It's almost like they built this facility to host this type of event."
The G-7 Summit rotates between sites chosen by the seven member countries and the European Union. The last time it was held in the U.S., in 2012, President Barack Obama held it at the government-owned retreat at Camp David in Maryland. In 2004, President George W. Bush held it at the exclusive, isolated resort of Sea Island, Ga.
This year, Trump had hinted repeatedly that he intended to host the event at his resort. At the G-7 Summit in August in Biarritz, France, Trump said his aides had examined other sites and told him that Doral is the best. The site is set among office parks, in an inland area near the Miami airport.
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"They went to places all over the country, and they came back and they said, 'This is where we'd like to be,'" Trump said then. "It's not about me. It's about getting the right location." He particularly praised the club's ample parking.
Doral is a major part of Trump's portfolio: It provides more revenue to him than any other hotel or golf club, and he took out $125 million in loans to buy it.
But, in recent years, the keystone property has fallen into steep decline, with profits falling 69% in three years. An expert hired by the Trump Organization blamed the drop on Trump's politicized brand.
Trump's properties have hosted U.S. government officials before, and the company says it does not seek to make a profit off that business. But even so, Trump's properties can be expensive: at his Mar-a-Lago Club, for instance, the government paid Trump's company $546 per night for each staff member staying in the club's guest rooms.
In this case, Trump's son Eric Trump -- who helps run the Trump Organization while his father is president -- recently said that, if Doral was the choice, Trump would not over-charge his own government.
"It actually would have saved the U.S. a tremendous amount of money in that they wouldn't be paying for massive amounts of rooms with some hospitality company that's going to milk the hell out of the U.S. government," Eric Trump said at a forum put on by Yahoo! Finance last week.
Trump has visited his own properties more than 100 times as president, sometimes bringing along foreign leaders. Those visits have resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in revenue for his businesses, as the U.S. government -- and other governments -- pay for their personnel to accompany him.
But this is something on a different scale: six foreign leaders, plus hundreds of other foreign personnel, would be housed at Trump's resort near the Miami airport. Trump is currently facing lawsuits accusing him of violating the Constitution's ban on receiving "emoluments" from foreign governments.
A Section on 10/18/2019