What did Donald Trump do today?
He made money off the presidency at one of his golf courses for the second consecutive weekend.
Trump spent the day at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, VA, watching the third round of a LIV tour event. LIV is an upstart golf tour seeking to challenge the PGA Tour's dominance. Backed by the Saudi government, with whom Trump is deeply financially entangled, it's been a lifeline for Trump's golf courses, which—like so much of the real estate empire he inherited—have often lost shocking amounts of money. As one 2021 article put it, the reason that the avid golf fan Trump can't seem to make money even on a business he ought to have some understanding of might be "incompetence, vanity, or something more sinister" like tax fraud.
Families of September 11th victims have protested LIV events at Trump courses, correctly noting that before Trump started taking Saudi money, he had blamed the Saudi royal family for their complicity in allowing the attacks to happen. (There's no clear evidence that the Saudi government was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks, but it absolutely has committed atrocities like the kidnapping and murder of Saudi-American journalist Jamal Khashoggi—and gotten Trump to run interference for it on multiple occasions.)
This is the second weekend in a row that Trump, who has been open about accepting thinly-disguised bribes during his second term, has made money off of a major professional golf tournament. Last week it was the PGA Tour's turn to pay the piper at Trump National Doral. That course saw the unveiling of a 15-foot golden statue of Trump this week, so reminiscent of a biblical idol that a televangelist supporter of Trump felt obliged to preemptively address the issue: "Let me say this plainly: this is not a golden calf."
Why does this matter?
- Using the power of the state to force people to pay you money is what tinpot dictators and Russian oligarchs do.
- It's bad to have a president in hock to so many foreign governments, and worse that they're all dictatorships.
- One way to avoid people thinking you're making golden idols of yourself is not to make golden idols of yourself.