As the PGA Tour and LIV Golf attempt to unite through Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, it’s no surprise that Donald Trump is desperate to play peacemaker.
Four years ago, the PGA announced they were stripping Trump’s Bedminster golf club of being able to host the PGA Championship in the wake of the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Three years ago, families of 9/11 victims were protesting Trump’s willingness to let the Saudi-backed LIV Tour hold an event at his New Jersey golf course, which sits just 50 miles from Ground Zero.
And now, Trump, as the current president of the United States, is welcoming business from Saudi Arabia to orchestrate a PGA-LIV merger, an obvious conflict of interest that Pablo Torre says was years in the making.
“Donald Trump has been foreshadowing for two years,” Torre told Tim Miller on The Bulwark Podcast. “Complaining about the PGA, welcoming business from LIV and Saudi Arabia, he’s been saying a merger is inevitable. ‘Anybody who is fighting LIV is going to lose. You might as well allow me, Donald Trump, to basically moderate a business merger.’ In which again, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump becomes a major winner because yes, now his business at his golf courses, the things he loves the most, they will get to profit in ways that are just very clearly corrupt given that he’s the president.”
“It’s really an amazing trick that Trump is pulling where he gets to bathe in nationalism while being the direct business partner to Saudi Arabia,” Torre continued. “I’m trying to track what bigotries we want and which ones we don’t. I’m trying to track when foreignness is supposed to feel foreign and not like one of us. And it seems like the only through-line is are you giving Donald Trump money.”
Is the PGA-LIV merger good for golf? The more important question might be whether it’s good for Trump, as the current president seemingly uses the power of his title to serve his family’s financial interests.
Donald Trump is already a business partner of LIV Golf. A merger with the PGA means the president’s golf courses will benefit that much more from continuing to host LIV tournaments, such as the one planned for April at the Trump National Doral in Miami.
Not only is it a conflict of interest for the president, but it’s also a great hypocrisy to the platform he ran on. Nationalism. Ah, yes, preach the love you have for your country while simultaneously embracing business from a Saudi government that was complicit in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It’s one thing for golfers, or even Donald Trump when he wasn’t president, to take Saudi money without worrying where it came from. But the president doing it with a self-serving interest seems like a different level of conflict of interest.
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com