‘I hope they have kidnapping insurance’:
Trump on PGA’s move from his course ... to Mexico
The PGA Tour just put one in the rough, with a decision to move a World Golf Championships event from Donald Trump’s Doral resort in Florida to Mexico City — handing the GOP presidential candidate a hole-in-one talking point.
The PGA Tour insisted it’s a business decision, but Trump turned it into a friendly bounce — seizing on the political implications of what he called a “sad day for Miami, the United States and the game of golf” to leave Doral for Mexico City, after 54 years of staging tournaments at the resort near Miami.
“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,” said Trump, who bought the resort in 2012. “This decision only further embodies the very reason I am running for president of the United States.”
In a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity, Trump sniped, “I hope they have kidnapping insurance.”
Cadillac did not renew its title sponsorship of the event, and PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said another sponsor that wanted to be at Doral could not be found. The tour signed a seven-year deal with Grupo Salinas, a group of Mexico City companies overseen by chairman Ricardo Salinas.
Finchem insisted the move had nothing to do with politics.
“As we anticipated, some of the reaction revolves around the feeling that somehow this is a political exercise, and it is not that in any way, shape or form,” Finchem said. “It is fundamentally a sponsorship issue. We are a conservative organization. We value dollars for our players. We have a strong sense of fiduciary responsibility. So we make decisions that are in the best interests of our players, short-term and long-term.”
Political observers noted that with Trump’s wild popularity, the PGA’s nonpolitical claim was a swing and a miss.
“I’m pretty sure more golfers are loyal to Trump than to the PGA,” said University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, who blogs at Instapundit.com. “Trump fans will be sure it’s politics.”
The coincidence of the move to Mexico was not lost on some of the players. Trump has campaigned heavily on stopping illegal immigration, promising he’ll build a “beautiful wall” and get Mexico to pay for it.
“It’s quite ironic that we’re going to Mexico after being at Doral,” Rory McIlroy said. “We just jump over the wall.”
But McIlroy said it was good for the World Golf Championships event to be in Mexico because these events were meant to be played around the world. Three of them had been held in the United States. The other is in Shanghai.