Golf mates give advice to Trump
UNITED STATES: President Donald Trump sought advice on matters of state from members of his golf club and told them to ‘‘come along’’ to the clubhouse to see him interview candidates for his cabinet, according to a leaked tape recording.
The 13-minute recording, made in November, prompted more questions over Trump’s use of his clubs as secondary bases for his administration and as venues for his meetings with foreign leaders.
Yesterday he interviewed potential candidates to be his national security adviser at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
He was also due to call the leaders of three nations and to hold a meeting about Obamacare with Tom Price, his health secretary, and the head of the White House budget office.
‘‘Will be having many meetings this weekend at The Southern White House,’’ he tweeted on Sunday as his motorcade rolled from his pink stucco mansion to the nearby Trump International Golf Club.
The president has spent the past three weekends at Mara-Lago, offering its members an intimate view of affairs of state.
Some have remarked that for a US$200,000 (NZ$279,000) joining fee and $14,000 in annual dues, membership of his club now appears to bring with it access to the most powerful man in the world and his administration.
New members include Wall Street financiers and property tycoons, to whom Trump often turns to for advice, according to The New York Times.
White House officials said the remarks had been taken out of context, however there have been reports that the president is failing to seek counsel from members of his cabinet before he makes pronouncements that alter policy.
Eric Trump, Trump’s second son, said any suggestion that membership of the club brought undue influence was unfair and assumed ‘‘the worst of us and everyone’’.
However Richard LeFrak, a New York property developer and also a friend of the president, said Trump had consulted him at Mara-Lago on the construction of his proposed wall along the Mexican border.
‘‘He said: ‘Would I consider doing it?’ And then he suggested that the price that was being quoted in the media seemed absurdly high to him,’’ he said.
LeFrak replied that he thought the Department of Homeland Security, headed by John Kelly, was going to deal with the wall.
‘‘And he said: ‘Yes, maybe General Kelly will call you.’ ‘‘
LeFrak’s account of their meeting seems to accord with the informal business style outlined in Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal, and perhaps with the audio recording from Trump’s New Jersey golf club in November.
‘‘This is my real group,’’ he says in the recording.
‘‘I see all of you, I recognise like 100 per cent of you, just about.’’
He could be heard telling one member that ‘‘we were just talking about who we [are] going to pick for the [Federal Communications Commission]’’, and adding: ‘‘Can you give me some recommendations?’’ – The Times