If President Trump’s master plan in choosing one of his golf resorts in Miami to host the 2020 G-7 summit is to enrich himself by promoting the property, then boy, oh boy was that a stupid plan.
Of course, that is not the plan. But when acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney made the location announcement on Thursday, the Washington press corps went wild with accusations that Trump is in effect using the office of the presidency for his own financial gain.
First, Trump’s properties host big events all the time and have done so for years. Secondly, we should know exactly what’s going to happen now that Trump has just ensured that hundreds of people who hate him — we collectively refer to them as the national media — will be visiting his National Doral Miami resort.
Every report and review about the resort between now and the summit is going to be scathing. Cable news commentary on the resort will drip with venom. MSNBC and CNN will break their cameras before allowing any on-site “TRUMP” logo be seen on air.
To wit, immediately after Mulvaney’s press briefing concluded, MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle came on with a snippy remark about bedbugs at the Doral.
I’m convinced Trump chose the location for the sole purpose of watching reporters combust in a fiery rage. It was just last week that a pro-Trump group at the Doral had hosted a conference wherein they showed attendees a parody video depicting the president slaughtering different media organizations. (The White House condemned the video in a statement.)
Trump knows that journalists are going to hate every minute that they’re forced to be on his property for the summit. Any profit Trump’s business makes off the summit will be modest, but the dispatches from the media on-site will be very rich.
