President Trump said on Friday that he would host next year’s Group of 20 summit at the Trump National Doral golf club near Miami, ignoring the glaring ethical concerns that led him to drop a similar idea to host an economic summit at the property during his first term.
“Everybody wants it there,” Mr. Trump said to reporters, without elaborating who had called for such a thing. “It’s right next to the airport. It’s the best location. It’s beautiful.”
The plan would violate a criminal statute and ethics regulations that prohibit conflicts of interest for government employees — were it not for the fact that Mr. Trump is president. He is exempt from such rules, and the Supreme Court ruled last year that presidents have a broad but not fully defined criminal immunity for official acts taken while in office.
In 2019, Mr. Trump proposed but ultimately dropped a similar plan to host a Group of 7 meeting at the club in the face of overwhelming criticism — from Democrats and members of his own party — who said that he had crossed a line by merging foreign diplomacy with his personal business interests.
That criticism from Republicans did not immediately resurface on Friday, a sign of just how much Mr. Trump has worked to quash internal dissent and remake the G.O.P. in his image since his defeat in the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump, who had dismissed the criticism in 2019 as “irrational” hostility, insisted on Friday that he would make “no money,” and implied there would be no conflict of interest for him in hosting foreign leaders, their staff and security details at a property he owns. The White House said in a statement that the president’s resort would charge only “at cost” and not profit from the event. The White House said the same thing in 2019.
Mr. Trump also said that the idea posed a logistical problem for Trump Doral, because it would be the peak season for the hotel — the time that resorts typically charge the highest rates — when the summit takes place in December 2026.
“That’s the biggest month in Florida,” Mr. Trump said. “You can’t get a room in Florida in December, January, etc., that area. And that’s the time we’re talking about. So from that standpoint, it’s not good. But we want to make sure it’s good.”
Since the beginning of his political life, Mr. Trump has used his election campaigns and time in office to promote his brand and profit from it.
In his first term, Mr. Trump regularly met with supporters over dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, now a Waldorf Astoria, which became the most popular venue for political fund-raisers in the capital. He also frequently visited his family’s properties, generating revenue from the government employees and others who followed him to Trump-owned hotels.
During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump ramped up the monetization of the Trump brand, which has continued apace after winning re-election, despite ethical questions.
Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has also moved aggressively to monetize the presidency, greenlighting business ventures that would have been once considered ethically unthinkable.
The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch, charging $500,000 to join, all in the past few months. Experts have valued a luxury jet gifted to Mr. Trump by Qatar at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined.
Mr. Trump has also used his clemency powers to reward allies and to punish his enemies. In April, the president pardoned a Florida health care executive whose mother raised millions of dollars for Mr. Trump’s campaigns and played a role in trying to expose the contents of a diary written by Ashley Biden, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s daughter.
In a sign of how much the bar for ethical concerns has fallen since Mr. Trump’s first term, even the president’s loudest critics now barely note his frequent visits to Mar-a-Lago and other Trump-owned properties.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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