“The president says each country will have their own villa,” Hemmer added later. “How do you beat that?”
“I’ll tell you how you beat that, an emoluments clause that says the president should not be benefiting from federal dollars like this,” answered Juan Williams, the single critic in the discussion, decrying that “basically the president is making the federal government into a subsidiary of the Trump company, and that he’s using them as a P.R. and marketing firm” for a resort that has “had failing finances over the last few years.”
“How are we normalizing aberrant behavior on the part of the president?” Williams asked. “Any other president, this would be a massive scandal. This week, it’s like a pimple.”
The Wall Street Journal opinion editor James Freeman, who was also on the same panel, furthered the idea that the event will be held at cost, adding that hosting the summit might actually be a risky move for Trump.
“If that's true, then the subsidy is actually going from Trump to the taxpayer. Now, as far as the marketing benefit of Doral, you know, there is some downside here. Because if these G-7 guys show up and they like it, and say this is the best ever, it's fantastic — and in fact many people tell me it is the greatest — then it's a win for the president. But what if they say, ‘That’s a dump, I’m not going to stay there again’?”
Fox host Chris Wallace also appeared on America’s Newsroom and was remarkably critical of the claims that the event would be done “at cost” by the Doral resort.
“You have to ask yourself, why would President Trump decide to award this? And he’s the one who decided to award it to his own resort. You’re talking about thousands of people coming, staying, eating, whatever. There are also questions about will there have to be upgrades? Who pays for those? Will upgrades to Doral be paid for by the American government, the American taxpayers?”