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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / The Doral Debacle Open Thread: “He’s in the Hospitality Business!”

The Doral Debacle Open Thread: “He’s in the Hospitality Business!”

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So Mick Mulvaney told us. And Trump certainly set out a rich buffet for his detractors…

… “He had no choice,” Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and longtime friend of the president’s, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “It shouldn’t have been done in the first place. And it’s a good move to get out of it and get that out of the papers and off the news.”

[And you know it just broke Christie’s heart to be called on to explain this for his old frenemy…]

The president first heard the criticism of his choice of the Doral watching TV, where even some Fox News personalities were disapproving. By Saturday afternoon, his concerns had deepened when he put in a call to Camp David, where Mr. Mulvaney was hosting moderate congressional Republicans for a discussion of issues facing them, including impeachment, and was told the consensus was he should reverse himself. Those moderates are among the votes Mr. Trump would need to stick with him during an impeachment.

“I didn’t see it being a big negative, but it certainly wasn’t a positive,” said Representative Peter T. King of New York, one of those at Camp David. He said the group told Mr. Trump’s aides that sticking with the decision “would be a distraction.”…

“I think there was a lot of concern,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a member of the Republicans’ leadership team. “I’m not sure people questioned the legality of it, but it clearly was an unforced political error.”

Mr. Cole said he did not speak to the president directly about it, but expressed relief that Mr. Trump had changed his mind, and was certain that other Republicans felt the same way. “We just didn’t need this,” he said.

By late Saturday afternoon, Mr. Trump had made his decision, but he waited to announce the reversal until that night in two tweets that were separated by a break he took to watch the opening of Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News program…

[Because a guy needs a little ego balm when he’s facing such a hurtful choice.]

“At the end of the day,” Mr. Mulvaney said Sunday, “he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business, and he saw an opportunity to take the biggest leaders from around the world, and he wanted to put the absolute best show, the best visit that he possibly could.”

[A show, he most certainly put on, regardless.]

…[T]he selection, as the president had anticipated, touched off a wave of censure from Democrats and ethics experts.

But it was also criticized by conservative legal scholars, who were already uncomfortable with a number of recent actions by the White House, including pressuring Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and his son Hunter Biden.

“It is really just about him ordering the country to pay him money,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a Department of Homeland Security official in the George W. Bush administration who is now a senior fellow at the conservative R Street Institute. “It is just indefensible.”

Pushing the Doral site also threatened to hurt the United States’ standing globally, legal experts said, in light of its decades’ worth of efforts to combat corruption by other foreign governments, according to Jessica Tillipman, a lawyer who specializes in an American law known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

“This is no different than any other corrupt leader of an oil-rich African country who is taking money from the government and taxpayers,” she said….

Scholars who have studied the history of Group of 7 gatherings — dating to their start in the 1970s — said they could cite no other time when a president effectively tried to force global political leaders to pay his or her family money at a resort owned by the head of state.

“This was unprecedented,” said John Kirton, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and the director of the G7 Research Group, which studies these gatherings. “This was astounding and embarrassing to the United States.” …

Look on the bright side!

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    geg6

    That Dan Murphy tweet is spot on.

    Motherfucker is the whiniest asshole I’ve ever seen outside of a gathering of the Trumpenlumpentariat.

  2. 2.

    rikyrah

    As we were discussing in the previous thread:

    I was very satisfied watching the commentary about Doral. Since I’ve never been a government contractor, I had no idea how extensive and how to the minutia, government contract law is.

    This was going to be ACTUAL CONTRACTS. No gray area. No fuzzy area. You go against the contract law, and you are open to being charged with a felony. And, that began with Mulvaney, standing his lying azz up there, talking about the ‘process’ had been gone through. You have to put the process in writing. People must be able to follow the dots. Mulvaney put his azz up there for felonies. Not that I care about him being charged…but, I honestly believe that some attorney stood up on a table and began to shout the laws- explicit, no way around them – laws, that would have been broken with Doral.

    SOMEONE was going to have to put their signature and possible freedom on the line to sign those contracts. It’s all fun and games until you risk going to jail.

    I am clear that I believe everytime he goes to one of those damn clubs, he’s breaking the Emoluments Clause because the Secret Service pays out . Then there’s the membership fees paid.
    But, his sycophants will argue ‘ fuzzy area’.

    This G7 thing was an actual government contract. For it to go forth, someone would have to sign on the dotted line and become legally responsible for FOLLOWING ALL OF THE LAWS OF GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS.
    Once you sign, and they catch you breaking said law, your azz is on the line for felonies.

  3. 3.

    MattF

    It’s been predicted (in the thread below) that Trump will find a way to get the Doral some other federal contract. That phoney emoluments clause is for losers.

  4. 4.

    lumpkin

    All these gops, afraid to condemn the corruption because they’re askeert of trump and his supporters and afraid to approve it because they’re afraid of everyone else. Being an abject chickenshit is not easy.

  6. 6.

    PST

    This isn’t especially on topic for this thread, but I liked what I read. David Leonhardt’s column in the Times argues that the time is now ripe for demonstrations in favor of impeachment. Want Trump to Go? Take to the Streets:

    The impeachment inquiry has reached the stage when it needs an outside game. We all know where the inside game is likely to lead: House Democrats will impeach Trump; Senate Republicans will acquit him; and he will claim vindication. But Trump’s presidency has become too dire for Americans to accept that outcome without trying to change it.

  7. 7.

    KrakenJack

    I do wish he had doubled down on Doral. It had the potential to do a lot more damage to him as each aspect of his harebrained idea got attention. The fact that he got good advice is nearly as surprising as him taking it…

  8. 8.

    hells littlest angel

    Technically, carnival freak shows are part of the hospitality business. Barkers say, “Step right up!” Which is hospitable.

  9. 9.

    Aleta

    His business is inhospitality. Dictating who is not welcome. Forcing people into confinement for personal profit.

  10. 10.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    He’s the whiniest, unmanliest grifter who ever grifted. But he whines! He whines for you, forgotten America!

    they’re already running a GE ad that features the usual graphics for a presidential ad– vision, jobs, change– and the the words “tough guy”, and you just know he insisted on it being in there. And to his howler monkeys, it makes sense, he’s standing up to the real enemies, people like the people who read this blog.

    Watching MSNBC with hopeful reports of a “Republican insider” who told Nicole Wallace there’s a 20% chance of conviction in the Senate, I wonder if trump gets that Mitch McConnell would slit trump’s throat yesterday if he thinks trump puts the Senate majority at serious risk

  11. 11.

    Brachiator

    “At the end of the day,” Mr. Mulvaney said Sunday, “he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business,

    I guess Trump considers being president his side hustle.

    This crap is pretty much the definition of “conflict of interest.”

  12. 12.

    Gin & Tonic

    @PST: Having closely observed the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine that brought down Viktor Yanukovych, I can state confidently that the American people have neither the stomach nor the stamina for that level of protest.

  14. 14.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @rikyrah:

    he’s breaking the Emoluments Clause because the Secret Service pays out . Then there’s the membership fees paid.
    But, his sycophants will argue ‘ fuzzy area’.

    Apparently the Emoluments Clause is as fuzzy an area as it gets, with no legal standard or punishment set, never addressed before because nobody has ever been as blatant in their corruption as Trump.

    @Aleta:

    His business is inhospitality. Dictating who is not welcome. Forcing people into confinement for personal profit.

    I would say that’s his passion. Somebody profits off of it, but not him directly. He just really hates brown people and wants to murder all of them.

  15. 15.

    Fair Economist

    @KrakenJack: Trump would have been digging his grave deeper by sticking with the Doral, yes, but today’s remarks show he is really losing it. He will find plenty of other holes to dig himself into.

  17. 17.

    Fair Economist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I wonder if trump gets that Mitch McConnell would slit trump’s throat yesterday if he thinks trump puts the Senate majority at serious risk

    Fundraising and approval ratings say we’re already there. In all 5 of the obviously competitive Republican seats (AZ/CO/IO/ME/NC), the incumbent is underwater in approval, behind in fundraising, or both. Given the lead weight Trump will provide in the general I’d say flipping the Senate is now more likely than now.

  18. 18.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Sen. Ken Cramer (R-ND) on Trump’s decision to award G7 summit to his own Miami property: “It may seem careless politically, but on the other hand there’s tremendous integrity in his boldness and his transparency

    maybe the greatest act of hackery since Roman Hruska’s “The mediocre should have a voice on the Supreme Court!”

    and he’s probably Senator for life if he wants it

    ETA: Also, Steve Schmidt is back on MSNBC after a several month time-out (self-imposed?) after his meltdown when people started making fun of him for Howard Schultz

  19. 19.

    jeffreyw

    “It may seem careless politically, but on the other hand there’s tremendous integrity in his boldness and his transparency”

    The fact that they took the money from the bank during daylight hours doesn’t mean that the bandits had integrity. It was bold and transparent, so they do have that going for them.

  20. 20.

    zzyzx

    @rikyrah:

    I am clear that I believe everytime he goes to one of those damn clubs, he’s breaking the Emoluments Clause because the Secret Service pays out . Then there’s the membership fees paid.

    I’ve read the clause a dozen times today and I don’t see any way it can be broken without another country being involved. Other laws, sure but I keep seeing this being the phrasing:

    No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

    So the G7 summit was a definite violation. The Secret Service paying him doesn’t seem to apply.

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @zzyzx: some people argue that gov’t money going to his golf clubs fall under the domestic emolument clause

    The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

  24. 24.

    The Moar You Know

    Watching MSNBC with hopeful reports of a “Republican insider” who told Nicole Wallace there’s a 20% chance of conviction in the Senate

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I keep reading this shit in the news.

    I mean, just so we’re all clear, we all understand that number is zero, right? Not one. Not even Susan Collins.

  26. 26.

    waspuppet

    And it’s a good move to get out of it and get that out of the papers and off the news.

    Except it won’t be, because Donald Trump is a manchild who will be complaining about this for the next six or seven years.

  28. 28.

    zzyzx

    @rikyrah: You are correct. It is I that was confused.

    The 25th Amendment turned out to be so different in realty than the pop understanding that I kind of assumed we were just messing things up again.

  29. 29.

    Redshift

    The important lesson from the Doral fiasco is that the GOP could have stopped any of Trump’s previous appalling actions if they really wanted to, so the truth is they didn’t really want to. Sniveling about being afraid of him turning the base against them, or anonymous GOP legislators saying how appalled they were privately is just BS and ass-covering.

  30. 30.

    rikyrah

    @Redshift:

    The important lesson from the Doral fiasco is that the GOP could have stopped any of Trump’s previous appalling actions if they really wanted to, so the truth is they didn’t really want to.

    TRUTH

  31. 31.

    Aleta

    @Frankensteinbeck: To me, his business and profit include what he receives from his transactions. What he receives from votes and anti-immigrant publicity. And what he receives when his donors or helpers get government contracts to run immigration facilities, training or supplies for CPB, etc.

  33. 33.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    ourtney hagle @ CourtneyHagle
    CNN contributor Sean Duffy comes on to push the debunked Crowdstrike conspiracy theory for the second day in a row to justify Trump’s actions
    Alisyn Camerota: That’s a conspiracy theory. … Ukraine doesn’t have the server, Sean.”

    Jay Caruso @ JayCaruso
    Good lord. There is no server. The DNC email was cloud-based spread out over 140 network servers. The idea there was this lone box, which is now hidden somewhere in Ukraine containing all the DNC emails, is Alex Jones level stuff.

    Eric Kleefeld Retweeted Jay Caruso
    CNN contributor Sean Duffy is too crazy for the managing editor of the Washington Examiner.

  34. 34.

    PJ

    @PST: The time for demonstrations in the street in favor of impeachment would be the time when there are enough Republican senators who would be afraid enough for their seats to vote to convict, and not before then. McConnell is talking about having a Senate trial this year because he knows the sooner the trial happens, the easier it will be to get an acquittal. The longer the impeachment investigation goes on, the more crimes Trump commits and admits to, the more pressure there will be on Republican senators to do the right thing, and the easier it will be to get a conviction (I’m not saying it will be easy or even likely).

  35. 35.

    J R in WV

    @rikyrah:

    This G7 thing was an actual government contract. For it to go forth, someone would have to sign on the dotted line and become legally responsible for FOLLOWING ALL OF THE LAWS OF GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS.

    Once you sign, and they catch you breaking said law, your azz is on the line for felonies.

    Back 11 years ago when I was still working for an environmental protection agency I applied for and received quite a lot of federal money via a grant program. It made me very nervous, as I didn’t know anything about federal contracts. But the agency I worked for was funded in large part by federal grants!

    So I made sure the work done with the funds was directly related to the grant applications I submitted, and let the administration folks make sure the “I”s were crossed and the “T”s were dotted… er, uh, something like that.

    I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations has run on all that…

  36. 36.

    Elizabelle

    @The Moar You Know:

    Mitt Romney (aka Pierre whatever)?

    I disagree that there is not one single Republican senator that would vote to convict Trump, which seems to be what you are assuring us. We don’t know, but it is a definite possibility.

    I tire of people who deal in absolutes.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    @PJ:

    The longer the impeachment investigation goes on, the more crimes Trump commits and admits to, the more pressure there will be on Republican senators to do the right thing, and the easier it will be to get a conviction (I’m not saying it will be easy or even likely).

    I agree. Time is not on the Republicans’ side, and Trump is what he is and seems to be getting less stable by the day.

    Circumstances change. Every single day.

    Margaret Sullivan, WaPost ombudsman: The media has turned a corner and is normalizing Trump less. It’s about time.

    This could help. It’s well past time, more like 3 years too late, but Trump’s failures are out there to see, for anyone not looking on with Fox TV-addled eyes.

    Trump’s situation is not going to improve.

  39. 39.

    different-church-lady

    he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business

    You misspelled “hostility” there…

  40. 40.

    different-church-lady

    I thought I was doing something very good for our Country…

    You know, maybe having thoughts just isn’t your thing.

  41. 41.

    LuciaMia

    I do wish he had doubled down on Doral. It

    Wow, I’m kinda shocked he didn’t. Totally out of character.

  42. 42.

    different-church-lady

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    The idea there was this lone box, which is now hidden somewhere in Ukraine containing all the DNC emails, is Alex Jones level stuff.

    You always have to remember: Trump is a follower when it comes to this stuff. He latches on to every batshit conspiracy that floats up through the wingnut vent pipes because he is just as much a consumer of this garbage as any other brain-addled Breitbart devotee.

  43. 43.

    Calouste

    @LuciaMia: Give him a day or two. There will be another twitter rant. He just can’t admit he made a mistake, and that has happened many times before.

  44. 44.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    As unhinged as he’s been lately I’m starting to wonder if the bottom is dropping out of his scam of a financial empire. Doral is losing money, Turnberry is losing money, the place in Ireland (or is that Turnberry, in which case the place in Scotland) is losing money. Does he own any properties that are actually making money? Maybe his creditors are starting to turn the screws, so he comes up with this desperate G7 Hail Mary to mollify them only to see the idea fall through immediately. Suppose he and his kids wind up in receivership while he’s still in the White House?

  46. 46.

    sdhays

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I think he’ll bitch and whine for the 11 weeks, but the people around him will start clearing out their desks. It will mostly be a panicked thrashing around trying to cover up as many crimes as possible before they have to turn over the keys, but I don’t think it matters what Dump tweets after he loses the election (if we have to wait that long). And, honestly, I question whether he will ever comprehend his legal jeopardy before he is actually sitting behind bars. He has gotten away with so much in his life, and he really lacks basic imagination and comprehension skills that I’m not sure he could even formulate a stupid plan of hanging on after the election. I think he’ll start looking at how to monetize his victimization pretty much immediately.

  47. 47.

    Mike in NC

    After calling Hannity and Dobbs, Trump is going to do another 180 and decide nothing comes close to Doral. The classiest bedbugs in all of Florida. He might even have it declared a national landmark.

    Still can’t get over him holding a 71 minute cabinet meeting. At a minimum, three hours of uninterrupted ass-kissing were called for.

  49. 49.

    NotMax

    where Mr. Mulvaney was hosting moderate congressional Republicans

    Maitre d’: “Mulvaney, party of one?”

    //

  51. 51.

    TS (the original)

    @LuciaMia:

    Wow, I’m kinda shocked he didn’t. Totally out of character.

    Someone got through to him that this was 100% impeachable – or maybe Putin rang and said he wasn’t staying in Florida in hurricane season.

  52. 52.

    Aleta

    @lollipopguild: I expect to see him plastering his horrible self and products and voice upon the airwaves, cheating his voters out of money while offering their attention to whoever purchases him

  53. 53.

    Just Chuck

    So brazen corruption done out in the open is merely an “unforced political error?” Fuck you Cole. The other Cole that is. Well, fuck him too.

  54. 54.

    FlipYrWhig

    @lollipopguild: The amazing thing is how much happier SO MANY PEOPLE would be if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016. Trump would be MUCH happier, tweeting potshots every day that the media would eagerly cover. Hillary would be being asked constantly about Trump’s Twitter feed and there would be infinitely many stories about how her administration was dogged by vociferous criticism and unable to change the focus to a positive agenda. Mitch McConnell would be even more gleefully paralyzing government. “The left” would be barraging Hillary with insults about how she was so ineffective and Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have stood for any of it. And meanwhile the government would slowly and steadily govern things and we’d never have had to hear about caged migrant babies or slaughtered Kurds or Rudy Giuliani’s freakish teeth.

  57. 57.

    The Moar You Know

    I disagree that there is not one single Republican senator that would vote to convict Trump, which seems to be what you are assuring us. We don’t know, but it is a definite possibility.

    @Elizabelle: Name one. Remember the vote is public.

    Hell, I’ll give you Romney, even though he won’t. Now, name 19 more. That’s what you need. 20 to convict.

    I tire of people who deal in absolutes.

    I tire of people who deal in wishful thinking as being equivalent to what is actually possible in the real world, so I guess we’re even there.

  58. 58.

    hueyplong

    FWIW, I’d put the odds of a stroke ahead of removal by impeachment, but recent events give rise to a non-zero chance that our national enemies will in rapid succession call in markers to the extent that Republicans actually sit around and discuss having him knocked off like Howard Beal in Network. (They’d decide to ride it out with him.)

    It’s insane, but three years ago things that have actually transpired would have been called insane.

    Ruling out anything is what sounds wrong to me now.

  62. 62.

    Nick Schulig

    He should host the G7 at Guantanamo. Trump and his special guest Vlad should stay there after the meeting.

  64. 64.

    TriassicSands

    Clearly, no one could ever have predicted that anyone would object to Hospitality Don having official governmental meetings at his resort properties. Because this was such a completely normal thing to do, only the Lunatic Left at its looniest could object. Once Hospitality Don and the GOP have completely rewritten the Constitution designating Trump Emperor for Life and mandating that all government contracts go to Trump-owned businesses will the US be truly great. With the Congress disbanded, our Emperor — he of “great and unmatched wisdom” — will be free to rule by fiat.

    All hail, Hospitality Don, Planet Lord and Exalted Emperor of the Earth.

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