Why This Week’s PGA Tour Event Should Have Exposed Trump as a Conman Forever

When his fans think of Donald Trump before he somehow became President of the United States, it is a pretty safe bet that the following phrases come to their mind: Great businessman, multibillionaire, tremendous deal-maker, and a guy who always puts America and American jobs first.

A large part of why I have been an ardent critic of Trump all along is that I am very confident that none of those descriptions (which lie at the very heart of the narrative that got him elected president) are remotely true. If there was just one story that I had to use to prove this — much to the surprise of almost everyone — it would center on the new PGA Tour event, which begins today.

To understand why this is you need some historical context. One of the top traditional spots on the PGA Tour has, since before I was born, been at the Doral Resort in Miami. From 1962 through last year, each March the world’s best golfers came to Doral for a tournament that was usually a pretty good predictor of who would do what at the following month’s Masters tournament. (I attended it myself and even played in the pro-am portion as a teenager a couple of times.)

In 2007, the annual event took on added importance as a part of the “World Golf Championship” series. In 2012, after having fallen into disrepair, the Doral Resort was purchased by Donald Trump — and was, of course, renamed “Trump National Doral Miami.”

Last year, in the heat of the Republican primaries, the title sponsor of the tournament, Cadillac, announced that it was pulling out of the event. At that point, Trump, who loved having the tournament at his course and attended it every year, had several options.

Trump, the great multibillionaire deal-maker could convince Cadillac to remain, he could find another company to take it over, or, if worse came to worse, he could sponsor it himself. However, if Trump possessed any business magic sufficient to save a difficult situation, there was absolutely no evidence of it in this situation.

Now, if companies didn’t want to pony up sponsorship money for a sport seen as on the decline (now that Tiger Woods is lucky to even be able to stand up straight), that isn’t really Trump’s fault, though there was speculation that his controversial political campaign didn’t help matters. However, what happened — or more aptly what didn’t happen — next was extremely telling.

Trump had a huge incentive to keep this tournament at Doral far beyond just avoiding the embarrassment of seeing a long-time South Florida institution die under his watch. The tournament was vital to the prestige and advertising for his massive resort. Plus, having the pros at his place, and presenting the winner the trophy every year, was a huge ego stroke. Not to mention that this was a vital part of his master plan to eventually have a major championship come to one of his courses.

If Trump was even remotely as rich as he claims to be, he would have sponsored the tournament himself, at least for a year or two, so that a proper sponsor could be found and the tournament could be saved. Tiger Woods himself (who is not even a billionaire and had just gone through a brutal divorce at the time) did this in 2012 so that his charity tournament could continue on after sponsors bailed following his cheating scandal. While the price tag for Trump to maintain a “World Golf Championship” event would have been higher than what Woods paid, the entire purse this week is still just less than $10 million. If Trump is really worth $10 billion as he claimed at the time, that kind of money would have been easily found in his seat cushions.

But Trump seemingly never considered that option, most likely, because he isn’t exactly as rich as he alleges or he simply can’t afford to blow a few million dollars advertising his golf course, feeding his own ego, and making sure that a treasured tradition is maintained. So the PGA Tour was forced to move out of Doral and Miami for the first time since John F. Kennedy was president.

But here’s the kicker… they moved the tournament to Mexico.

That’s right. Donald Trump, the magic deal-maker who puts America first, couldn’t find a way to save a fifty-five year-old golf tournament and lost it (along with its jobs and economic stimulus) to a foreign country. And not just any foreign country, but the one he had targeted as a mortal enemy through most of his presidential campaign to that point.

In fact, Trump released this statement at the time spinning this disaster in a way that made it very clear that he was quite pissed off about the whole thing and probably fearful it might become a significant problem for his campaign:

It is a sad day for Miami, the United States and the game of golf, to have the PGA Tour consider moving the World Golf Championships, which has been hosted in Miami for the last 55 years, to Mexico. No different than Nabisco, Carrier and so many other American companies, the PGA Tour has put profit ahead of thousands of American jobs, millions of dollars in revenue for local communities and charities and the enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of fans who make the tournament an annual tradition. This decision only further embodies the very reason I am running for President of the United States.

You simply couldn’t make up a set of business circumstances that more dramatically exposed Trump as a fraud in nearly every way, and yet this story somehow never even came close to becoming an election issue. While the news media and Hillary Clinton’s incompetent campaign each deserve some blame for this, Trump actually got incredibly lucky with the timing of it all. By then, Marco Rubio, who as a Florida senator had the best standing to make it an issue, had already pulled out and the Florida primary had long since been completed. Why Hillary never talked about this in Florida is one of the many mysteries of her demise.

As a golfer, I will probably watch at least some of this week’s event in Mexico. But when I do I will be constantly reminded that if our president wasn’t a complete con-artist, the tournament would be being played at Doral and in the United States where it belongs. It’s too bad that I will probably be one of the very few who even thinks about it that way at all.

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John Ziegler hosts a weekly podcast focusing on news media issues and is a documentary filmmaker. You can follow him on Twitter at @ZigManFreud or email him at johnz@mediaite.com
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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.