Trump Is Holding the G7 at His Own Golf Resort and Wants Putin to Come

The next G7 summit will be held at President Donald Trump’s Trump National Doral Resort in Florida, White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told reporters Thursday.

It just happens to be the best place in the country to host the meeting of the world’s seven leading economic powers — and has nothing to do with Trump making money off of it. Its common spaces, Mulvaney insisted, are perfect. There’d even be plenty of room for the media, he said.

“There’s difficulties going various places,” Mulvaney insisted. “There’s one place, I won’t say where it was, we actually had to figure out if we were going to have oxygen tanks for the participants, because of the altitude.”

The Doral Resort, thankfully, is at sea level.

It would be “dramatically cheaper” to do it there, Mulvaney said, because the Trump Organization is doing the event at cost. When asked about the free marketing that the Trump resort would get from hosting such a huge summit, Mulvaney brushed off the question.

“Donald Trump is probably strong enough as it is, and he probably doesn’t need any more help on that,” Mulvaney said.

Mulvaney also said Trump still believes the G7 should once again be the G8, with Russian President Vladimir Putin invited to attend. Russia was suspended from the group in 2014 after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

“The president has been very candid about whether he wants Russia to rejoin the G7, they used to be part of that organization,” Mulvaney said. “We go to the G7 and what dominates so much of the discussion? Russia.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to have them inside as part of the conversation?”

But hosting a major diplomatic summit a resort he owns and making money off of it is nothing like the self-dealing that Trump’s has been accusing former Vice President Joe Biden of, Mulvaney said.

Trump has insisted that Biden, while serving as Vice President helped his son, Hunter, get on the board of a gas company in Ukraine that paid him $50,000 a month. “There’s no profit here,” Mulvaney insisted.

But hosting a major diplomatic summit at his own resort and making money off of it is nothing like the self-dealing that Trump’s been accusing former Vice President Joe Biden of, Mulvaney said.

Trump has insisted that Biden, while serving as vice president, helped his son Hunter get on the board of a gas company in Ukraine that paid him $50,000 a month. “There’s no profit here,” Mulvaney insisted.

Asked how the president would stand on a 2020 debate stage next to Joe Biden, if Biden is the Democratic nominee, and accuse him of such self-dealing after hosting the G7 at his own resort, Mulvaney said, “He’s going to do that extraordinarily well.”

And though the Doral resort is in Miami, which is sinking into the ocean as sea levels rise due to global warming, “Climate change will not be on the agenda,” Mulvaney said.

Cover: A Trump National Doral sign is seen at the golf resort owned by U.S. President Donald Trump's company on August 27, 2019 in Doral, Florida. President Trump said the United States may host the next G7 gathering at the golf resort. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)