Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Trump puts a presidential-size spotlight on his brand

Donald Trump

Evan Vucci / AP

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with House and Senate leadership, Wednesday, March 1, 2017, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s Saturday started with a trip to the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.

By Saturday night, on one of the few weekends since the inauguration that Trump remained in Washington, the president was dining at the Trump International Hotel a few blocks from the White House. He was greeted by well-wishers as he entered and exited the hotel’s steakhouse restaurant, BLT Prime by David Burke, with his daughter and son-in-law.

On Sunday morning, Trump was once again at the family’s Virginia golf course.

For Trump, it was just another weekend with a presidential-size spotlight on his family’s business outlets, a pattern that started during his transition when he drew international attention to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, by interviewing potential Cabinet picks there.

Saturday’s stops marked the eighth weekend in a row — out of the 10 weekends he has been in office — that Trump has visited a Trump-branded property, including his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. White House officials have said Trump goes to his clubs and restaurants because he is comfortable there, but critics increasingly argue that the visits are priceless advertising and that Trump and his family are using the presidency as a way to enrich themselves.

“It is normal for presidents to get out — and it can be a boost for small businesses across the city and the country,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a liberal nonprofit group. “But with President Trump, he spends his down time as a walking advertisement for his businesses. It is a major departure from historic norm and degradation of the office.”

Eric Trump, in an interview this month, disputed any suggestion that his father’s visits to family properties represented a conflict of interest. But he agreed that the Trump Organization’s assets — from Mar-a-Lago, where interest in memberships has surged, to its golf courses — were doing well.

“The stars have all aligned,” said Eric Trump, who as executive vice president of the Trump Organization oversees its 16 owned or operated golf courses around the world. “I think our brand is the hottest it has ever been.”

Trump has made three visits to the Trump National Golf Club, a string of trips that started after Eric Trump came to Washington this month to promote the 2017 Senior PGA Championship tournament. It is being held at the Virginia golf course on Memorial Day weekend.

Tickets to the event are being sold as Donald Trump is pushing the golf course into the spotlight, with reporters and photographers in tow Saturday for a daylong visit.

Shortly after 11 a.m. Sunday, with reporters placed at the complex’s indoor tennis center, Trump made a quick visit to the club for what White House officials said were three meetings. By noon Trump was headed back to Washington.

Photos of Trump surfaced on social media Saturday and Sunday hat appeared to show him in golf shoes and out on the golf course on Saturday, and then sitting at the golf club, during his short visit Sunday, watching a game of golf on television.

The New York Times confirmed, via geo-locating tools, that the items were posted Sunday from the Trump National Golf Club. But the White House officials did not respond when asked about the photographs, and would not confirm whether Trump played golf.

The warm welcome Trump received Saturday night at the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue offered a hint of why Trump may visit his family’s establishments so often: He is almost guaranteed the kind of enthusiastic crowd he would never find at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains.

“Keep up the good work!” one man shouted after Trump wrapped up his dinner at the hotel Saturday.

“Thank you, Donald! Thank you, Trump!” another man yelled.

Trump arrived shortly after 9 p.m. — a reporter from The Times was already having dinner at the hotel’s only restaurant — and walked through the lobby’s expansive atrium and into the restaurant, BLT Prime.

Wide-eyed guests turned to one another in disbelief. A man shouting Trump’s name had to be quieted by hotel security. Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were led to the open-air mezzanine, which looks out onto the vast lobby. Hotel guests leaned over the railings of the upper floors to gawk at the president sitting down for a family dinner.

As two hours passed, hotel guests who had been at the bar and waiting in the lobby formed a long line, hoping to meet the president as he left. Trump happily obliged. Around 11:30 p.m., he and Ivanka Trump worked the crowd, which included a teenager in a red “Make America Great Again” hat and a young girl asleep on the shoulders of her parents.

Screams then gave way to dozens of people chanting “USA! USA!”

A few minutes later, Trump disappeared into his motorcade for the short ride home.

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy