DORAL, FL — President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday he no longer plans to hold next year’s G-7 summit of world leaders at his Trump National Doral golf resort outside Miami. The president’s change of heart came two days after the White House announced the resort was “by far and away the best choice for the meetings.”
The president blamed the media and Democrats in multiple tweets Saturday night.
“Therefore, based on both media and Democrat crazed and irrational hostility, we will no longer consider Trump National Doral, Miami, as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020,” the president said. “We will begin the search for another site, including the possibility of Camp David, immediately.”
The Group of Seven summit includes the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States but not Russia, which was suspended from the group when it was known as the G-8. The G-7 was to meet in Doral from June 10-12.
The president said he thought he was doing something “very good for our country” by offering to host the summit at Trump National Doral.
“It is big, grand, on hundreds of acres, next to Miami International Airport, has tremendous ballrooms and meeting rooms, and each delegation would have its own 50- to 70-unit building. Would set up better than other alternatives.”
The president insisted once again he had no intention of profiting from the summit.
“I announced that I would be willing to do it at no profit or, if legally permissible, at zero cost to the USA,” Trump tweeted. “But, as usual, the hostile media and their Democrat partners went CRAZY.”
The announcement to hold the event at Trump National Doral came at the same time the president accused Joe Biden’s family of profiting from public office because of Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine when his father was vice president.
Speaking after the last G-7 meeting, President Trump dismissed the ethical concerns over thrusting his own resort onto the world stage.
“There’s limitations at other other places,” acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told reporters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. “We thought of the 12 places we looked at, that this was by far and away the best choice.”
Mulvaney said officials considered one location that was at such a high altitude “we actually had to figure out if we were going to have to have oxygen tanks for the participants because of the altitude.”
Trump National Doral was the scene of a police shootout last year when a gunman allegedly scaled a fence with a handgun, walked into the resort “spewing” comments about Trump and opened fire in the lobby.
Other U.S. locations where past summits have been held include Puerto Rico; Williamsburg, Virginia; Houston; Denver; Sea Island, Georgia; and Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.
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Watchdog groups wasted no time attacking the plan after Thursday’s announcement.
Trump “no longer sees fit even to pretend that he is constrained by the law or the Constitution,” asserted Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen.
“The president is now officially using the power of his office to help prop up his struggling golf business,” added Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.