President Donald Trump will host this year’s Group of 20 summit at his own Miami-area golf club — an “act of self-dealing,” The New York Times argued, made possible by years of “unmistakable” threats that cowed GOP lawmakers into silence.
As noted by the Times, the announcement of the summit’s location had “generated practically no protest,” standing in stark contrast to Trump’s 2019 attempt to host the annual Group of 7 summit at the same golf club, which he ultimately scrapped amid backlash.
Trump, the Times argued, had “effectively moved the goal posts of what is considered out of bounds,” allowing his latest act of “self-enrichment” to move forward in large part due to his “unmistakable” threats to GOP lawmakers over the past several years.
“There are at least three major differences from seven years ago: First, Mr. Trump has fashioned a more pliant party by systematically using primaries to purge Republicans who defied him, sending an unmistakable warning to those remaining to stay in line,” the Times’ report reads.
The Times also cited Trump’s dismantling of government accountability mechanisms and his newfound indifference “to criticism over possible ethical concerns” as reasons for the muted reaction to the G20 decision. Trump told the Times in January he “got no credit in the first term” for purportedly reining in his family’s business ventures.
“Trump didn’t just move ethical lines, he swallowed them like a plate of spaghetti,” quipped David Clinch, veteran journalist and co-founder of Media Growth Partners, in a social media post on X Sunday, reacting to the Times’ report.
Former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance argued that the Trump administration’s “corruption” was “so rampant” that it was “difficult to keep up with,” and political scientist Larry J. Sabato, reacting to the Times’ report, declared Trump to “easily” be “the worst in presidential history.”
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