White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that the 2020 G-7 summit will be held at one of President Trump’s properties, despite opposition to Trump steering funds to his own business.
The summit will be held at the Trump National Doral Miami, Mulvaney told reporters at a White House briefing. He said the Trump property was the best possible facility and that Trump’s business would not earn a profit.
“They are doing this at cost … it will be dramatically cheaper for us to do it at Doral,” Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney said the event would not be a free marketing opportunity for Trump, arguing “Donald Trump’s brand is probably strong enough as it is.”
The G-7 is comprised of seven economically powerful democracies and rotates annual summits among members, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
The last U.S. summit was hosted in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland. In 2004, George W. Bush presided over a summit on Sea Island, Georgia.
Mulvaney said the Trump-owned property was considered after Trump recommended it to him, but that upon review of a dozen site options, “Doral was by far and away far and away the best physical facility.”
The acting chief of staff said White House senior staff visited four finalist sites, including two Utah resorts and one in Hawaii.
For one of the Utah options, staff “had to figure out whether we would have to have oxygen tanks for the participants because of the altitude,” he said.
Mulvaney said that all G-7 events would be contained to the Trump-owned property, which is a short distance from Miami International Airport.
Asked if the appearance of self-dealing was wince-inducing, Mulvaney said Trump “got over that a long time ago.”
Trump said in August he was considering the Doral facility, resulting in pushback from ethics experts.
“It’s ethics violation squared,” said Kathleen Clark of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.
Mulvaney made the announcement as Trump flew to Texas, where he will host an evening rally in Dallas. The president is incurring a week of poor news, featuring widespread criticism for a troop withdrawal from Syria and interviews conducted by Democrats in a House impeachment inquiry.
In August, Trump defended the idea of hosting the G-7 at his own property, saying it made practical sense.
“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. “It’s not about me. It’s about getting the right location.”
“Doral happens to be … only five minutes from the airport, the airport’s right next door,” Trump said. “And by the way, my people looked at 12 sites, all good, but some were two hours from the airport, some four hours,” he said. “We have a series of magnificent buildings, we call them bungalows, they each hold from 50 to 70 rooms, they have magnificent views. And what we have also is Miami.”
Revenue at the resort dropped 18% from 2015 to 2017, from $85 million in 2015 to $75 million. Net operating income fell 69% in two years.
[Related: Wyden says ‘under no circumstances’ should Trump host G-7 summit at his hotel]
