Trump chose Doral for G7 summit because he's 'in debt and needs money', claims Yale history professor Timothy Snyder
President Donald Trump’s administration recently announced that the 2020 summit of the G7 nations -- the last of the American president’s first term -- will be held at his own golf resort in Doral, Miami. The move faced a backlash from the opponents as Trump was accused of making profits by hosting world leaders at his private property. On Saturday, October 19, Trump reversed the decision and blamed the media and the Democrats calling their opposition as “crazed and irrational hostility”.
While speculation remained rife as to why Trump decided in the first place, hosting an international summit at his own resort, a Yale professor argued that the president is 'in debt and needs money'.
'We don't know whether Trump has money'
Speaking on CNN on the same day that Trump withdrew his decision on the G7 summit’s venue next year, Timothy Snyder, Levin Professor of History at Yale, said: “One thing it has me thinking about is just how much this man must actually need money. Why else would he be doing this? We still don’t know whether Mr. Trump has money. We know that he has lots of debts, and that he is going for a million here and a million there with these sorts of things, it suggests he might really need money.”
Fifty-year-old Snyder, who has authored the book “The Road to Unfreedom” that came out last year, said it seemed odd to him that the president would want to divert attention to the Doral resort at a time when he is facing problems elsewhere and questioned how the real-estate businessman-turned-politician paid for the property at the time of purchasing it.
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney announced the decision to host the 46th G7 summit at the Doral golf resort on Thursday, October 17. He said in Trump’s defense that the latter was doing it at a cost and said the venue would be dramatically cheaper. He also said that Trump was not entitled to make any profit from the event and hence it was not illegal. The president had floated the idea of his property hosting the rich-men’s summit after the 2019 summit that took place in France in August.
Trump still considers himself to be in the hospitality industry
On Sunday, October 20, a day after Trump backtracked in the face of mounting criticism, Mulvaney said the president was genuinely surprised because he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business.
“At the end of the day 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 on the absolute best show, the best visit that he possibly could, and he was very comfortable doing that at Doral,” Mulvaney was quoted as saying on Fox News.
“I think we were all surprised at the level of pushback.I think it's the right decision to change and we'll have to find someplace else and my guess is we'll find someplace else the media won't like for another reason,” he said. The top official even dismissed the idea when the show’s host, Chris Wallace, told him that Trump is no longer in hospitality now and is serving as the president of the United States.
"Yeah, but it's his background,” he said.
It’s still not clear where the G7 summit of 2020 (scheduled between June 10-12) will take place.