President Trump conveniently is fuming at Democrats and the media over his reversal on hosting the G-7 summit next year at his Doral resort.
In a tweet announcing the decision on Saturday, he blamed the “Hostile Media and their Democratic Partners” for raising a stink over the initial choice to host the global leadership summit at his personal luxury resort in Florida. He followed up that sentiment on Monday morning, claiming it would’ve been “free” to host the event at Trump Doral, even though his administration said last week that the government would be charged at cost for the event.
Doral in Miami would have been the best place to hold the G-7, and free, but too much heat from the Do Nothing Radical Left Democrats & their Partner, the Fake News Media! I’m surprised that they allow me to give up my $400,000 Plus Presidential Salary! We’ll find someplace else!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2019
But according to new reporting in the New York Times, the only reason Trump even reconsidered his decision is because he learned of moderate Republicans’ opposition to the move, a key detail the President conveniently forgot to mention in his tweet lamenting the change of plans.
Trump first got an inkling that he might have made the wrong move when Fox News personalities, like legal analyst Andrew Napolitano and Fox News editor Chris Stirewalt, criticized the decision, according to the Times. By Saturday afternoon, Trump had grown so insecure about the host site that he called his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who was at Camp David with a group of moderate Republicans gathered to discuss issues facing the party, including the impeachment inquiry. Mulvaney reportedly told Trump that nearly everyone in attendance agreed he should pick a different spot.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who was in the group of lawmakers at Camp David told the Times that the he didn’t necessarily see the move as a “big negative, but it certainly wasn’t a positive” and that the group believed the decision would continue to be a “distraction” if Trump didn’t make a reversal.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) told the Times that Republicans on the Hill were worried about the optics of defending the Doral decision in the wake of Trump’s controversial and consequential decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, abandoning Kurdish allies fighting keeping ISIS at bay in the area. Cole said he thought the White House had clearly made an “unforced political error.”
Former Trump team members and ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had a more harsh rebuke of the decision, telling ABC on Sunday that Trump “had no choice” but to change his mind.
“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,” he said.
