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Trump is using the presidency to seek golf deals – hardly anyone’s paying attention | Mohamad Bazzi

In his first month in office, Donald Trump destroyed federal agencies, fired thousands of government workers and unleashed dozens of executive orders. The US president also found time to try to broker an agreement between two rival golf tournaments, the US-based PGA Tour and the LIV Golf league, funded by Saudi Arabia.

If concluded, the deal would directly benefit Trump’s family business, which owns and manages golf courses around the world. And it would be the latest example of Trump using the presidency to advance his personal interests.

On 20 February, Trump hosted a meeting at the White House between Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, and Yasir al-Rumayyan, chair of LIV Golf and head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, along with the golf star Tiger Woods. It was the second meeting convened by Trump at the White House this month with PGA Tour officials involved in negotiating with the Saudi wealth fund. A day before his latest attempt at high-level golf diplomacy, Trump travelled to Miami to speak at a conference organized by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is managed by Al-Rumayyan but ultimately controlled by the kingdom’s de facto ruler and crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Trump’s sports diplomacy in the Oval Office and cozying up to Saudi investors in Miami did not get much attention compared with his whirlwind of executive orders and new policies. But these incidents encapsulate Trump’s transactional and corrupt approach to governing – and the ways that wealthy autocrats including Prince Mohammed will be able to exploit the US president. While Trump will often boast he is making good deals for America, his relationship with Saudi Arabia and its crown prince is largely built on benefits for Trump’s family and its extensive business interests.

During Trump’s first term, the Trump Organization had dealings with Saudi Arabia that posed a potential conflict of interest for the president, especially after Saudi government lobbyists spent more than $270,000 on rooms at the Trump International hotel in downtown Washington. Now with no guardrails from Congress or the courts, the Trump family business is plowing ahead with new agreements that could reap tens of millions of dollars in profit from Saudi-linked real estate and golf ventures.

In December, a month after Trump was elected to a second term, the Trump Organization announced several real estate projects in Saudi Arabia, including a Trump Tower in the capital, Riyadh, and another $530m residential tower in the city of Jeddah. The projects are branding deals for Trump’s family business with Dar Global, an international subsidiary of Dar Al Arkan, one of the largest real estate companies in Saudi Arabia. While Dar Al Arkan is a private company, it relies on large Saudi government contracts and the crown prince’s goodwill.

After a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, the Trump Organization lost a series of real estate partnerships and other deals in the US. During Trump’s years out of power, Saudi Arabia became one of the few consistent sources of new deals and growth for the Trump brand, which was considered toxic by many US customers and businesses. Aside from real estate branding agreements with Saudi companies, Trump convinced the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund to host the LIV professional golf tour at several of his golf courses, including those in Washington, Miami and Bedminster, New Jersey. After the assault on the Capitol, the PGA of America, which is a separate organization from the PGA Tour and runs one of golf’s most important tournaments, the PGA Championship, cancelled a 2022 tournament at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey. The LIV Golf tournaments brought Trump’s properties back into the professional golfing circuit and provided millions of dollars in revenue for the Trump family business.

In November 2022, as Trump was preparing to announce his presidential campaign, the Trump Organization finalized a deal with Dar Al Arkan and the government of Oman to be part of a multibillion-dollar real estate development in Oman. While the Trump Organization is not expected to contribute funds toward the project’s development, it will earn millions of dollars in licensing fees for a Trump-branded hotel and golf course – and will be paid millions more in management fees for up to 30 years. The project raised concerns that if Trump was re-elected, he would violate the US constitution’s emoluments clause by profiting from being in a partnership with the government of Oman, a longtime US ally, and a real estate firm with close ties to the Saudi government. (A report released by Democrats in Congress last year found that Trump’s businesses had received $7.8m from at least 20 foreign governments during his first term as president.)

As Saudi Arabia helped keep Trump’s family business afloat after the Capitol insurrection, it provided even more crucial support to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser during the first Trump administration. Six months after Kushner left the White House in 2021, his newly created firm, Affinity Partners, secured a $2bn investment from the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund. Prince Mohammed overruled a panel of advisers who had recommended against investing in Kushner’s company, citing its lack of experience and track record in private equity. The advisers warned that due diligence had found the firm’s early operations “unsatisfactory in all aspects”, but internal documents leaked to the New York Times showed that the prince and his aides were more concerned with using the investment as part of a “strategic relationship” with Kushner.

Why was Prince Mohammed so eager to invest in Trump and Kushner’s businesses, even when they were out of power? The prince was betting on a second Trump term – and he was rewarding Trump’s steadfast support throughout his presidency. The Trump administration helped Prince Mohammed survive a severe challenge to his rule: fallout from the assassination of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. In October 2018, Khashoggi was ambushed inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team, who suffocated the Saudi journalist and dismembered his body with a bone saw.

As the international outcry over Khashoggi’s killing intensified and members of Congress demanded sanctions against Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials, Trump and Kushner never wavered in their support for the prince and his regime. While Saudi officials at first tried to claim that Khashoggi had left the consulate alive, the crown prince eventually blamed rogue operatives for the assassination. But a US intelligence report, which Trump refused to release, found that Prince Mohammed had ordered Khashoggi’s killing.

The president later made sure to remind Prince Mohammed that he owed Trump for defending him after Khashoggi’s assassination. In interviews with the journalist Bob Woodward in early 2020, Trump boasted, “I saved his ass”– meaning he protected the crown prince from a backlash in Congress. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone,” Trump told Woodward. “I was able to get them to stop.”

Today, the president is trying to reap more benefits based on his protection of Prince Mohammed – beyond what Kushner and the Trump Organization have already amassed from Saudi investments during Trump’s time out of office. Trump is corrupting the presidency by using it to negotiate international golf agreements and other deals that will ultimately enrich his family – and hardly anyone is objecting.