Fox News’ “straight news” Special Report show glossed over how Donald Trump plans to blatantly line his pockets by hosting the 2020 G-7 summit at his struggling Doral golf club and spent most of its brief report airing Trump lies about not making money.
Special Report spent about 26 seconds covering this corruption and even then bent over backward to sanitize it. It was buried in a four-minute G-7 wrap-up by correspondent John Roberts:
ROBERTS: President Trump will host the event next year, most likely at his sprawling Doral golf property in Miami [we saw a camera shot of the property].
The choice raises big ethical questions but President Trump is unmoved, insisting White House advance teams, military and Secret Service said it was the best location.
[VIDEO CLIP}
TRUMP: My people wanted it. From my standpoint, I’m not going to make any money. In my opinion, I’m not going to make any money. I don’t want to make money. I don’t care about making money.
This is an obvious, big, fat lie. It just so happens that The Trump National Doral Miami Golf Club is the Trump family’s biggest moneymaking asset, which just so happens to be “severely underperforming” other clubs in the area because of the “negative connotation that is associated with his brand,” according to Trump’s own tax consultant.
So what better way to revitalize it than with a big boost of cash from foreign leaders staying there, plus a big dose of PR, starting with an infomercial right there at the current G-7? The Miami Herald reported that hosting foreign dignitaries at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort had the fringe benefit of increasing international tourism there.
As if he were already thinking of how hosting the summit could attract business beyond the G-7, The Washington Post noted that in his infomercial, Trump “praised the club’s ample parking — as if world leaders generally lost time at summits while circling the parking lot.”
But while Special Report spent most of its report suggesting that making money is the last thing on Trump's mind, there was no time spent explaining any of the “big ethical questions” Roberts mentioned. He didn’t even point out the “obvious issues involving the Constitution’s emoluments clause,” that Greg Sargent flagged, “which bars officials from accepting gifts from foreign officials and states.” Sargent added, “The Trump Organization has said it donates profits from foreign governments to charity. But as Josh Dawsey and David Fahrenthold report, it has not explained how it calculates such profits.”
Watch Trump TV do its best to hide the Trump corruption below, from the August 26, 2019 Special Report, starting at 2:52.
I would not be surprised to see the international G7 community opt out of showing up at the 2020 conference and choose instead to wait until the results of the 2020 Election to find out if they will have an actual partner or just another four years of this nonsense.
Particularly when combined with his kicked-puppy attacks on Fox ‘News’, the latest stream of malignant (and blatant!) falsehoods must have Wrinkled Rupert nearly ready to cut bait and declare this rolling disaster over. He has never expressed any interest in funding a fantasy TV channel, after all.