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Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Keep it down – the president is talking to Xi': The golf club acting as Trump's summer White House
On a hot summer's day in August 2019 at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, members lounging by the pool were startled by an unusual announcement. 'Can you please keep the noise down because the president is talking to President Xi [Jinping] of China?' a club worker said through a megaphone. 'It was a phone call, not a visit, but it was pretty funny,' recalls one Bedminster member, speaking on condition of anonymity. Now that Trump is in the first summer of his second presidential term, expect more surprise diplomatic moments from Bedminster – dubbed the 'Summer White House' thanks to the president's habit of spending weekends and much of August at his plush, Georgian-style, 500-acre estate, one of his three official presidential residences. The Trump Organisation owns 15 golf clubs, but in summertime Bedminster becomes the crown jewel of the president's real estate empire, eclipsing Mar-a-Lago until September. 'It's his happy place,' the member added. 'He's always relaxed. Even at Mar-a-Lago there are wealthy 'Never-Trump' spies and enemies [conservatives backing anti-Trump Republicans]; at Bedminster, you get none of that. Everybody is known.' 'Occasionally Trump will put on a show – in his last visit to Bedminster before Covid, he landed by helicopter 10ft from the pool and everyone watched him arrive. But mostly the calmness couldn't be more different from all the drama in DC.' Trump bought the club in 2002 from National Fairways, a golf course developer that had acquired it from another colourful, scandal-ridden businessman, John DeLorean, when it was still known as Lamington Farm. He has long had a soft spot for Bedminster, a rural town in New Jersey's Somerset Hills – the most popular fox-hunting area on the East Coast. According to the Wall Street Journal, Christopher 'Kip' Forbes, son of the late entrepreneur Malcolm Forbes, once overheard Trump arguing with a Pan Am executive at a party at the Forbes estate in Bedminster in 1987 over who had the biggest plane. Today, his Bedminster club boasts a helipad, swimming pool, tennis courts, a spa and yoga centre and pickleball courts, alongside two 18-hole golf courses renowned for their spotless greens and manicured fairways. 'Whatever you think of how Trump runs a country, he knows how to run a club,' the member says. 'The main people running Bedminster have been there for over a decade.' While Trump's White House has hardly been short of acrimonious personnel exits and political drama, 'at Bedminster he doesn't fire people.' (Bedminster general manager David Schutzenhofer has been at the club since 2006; director of golf Mickie Gallagher joined the same year.) The president stays in a cottage next to the club's pool, which contains an office and a second-floor balcony and porch. Don Jr also has a cottage there, as do Eric and Lara Trump, and Ivanka Trump with her husband Jared Kushner – who married at the location in 2009. All are expected to stay there this summer. Ivanka and Jared Kushner's cottage at Bedminster It was to Bedminster that Donald Trump returned in July 2023 – receiving a hero's welcome after pleading not guilty at a Miami federal court to 37 charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents – and it was Bedminster where he stayed the night after he was shot in the right ear at a rally in Pennsylvania in July 2024. The club also features in the president's social media posts. A video of him playing a round at Bedminster with American golfing star Bryson DeChambeau garnered 15 million views on YouTube in the run-up to last year's presidential election, while a recent fake video of him hitting persistent critic Bruce Springsteen with a golf ball has racked up 81.9 million views on X. In reality, Mr Trump tends to play golf at Bedminster with a core group of around two dozen friends. One of them is Tom Bennison, a sports business executive. 'He uses golf in his position as president of the United States the same way he did as a businessman – as a relationship-building tool,' Bennison tells The Telegraph. 'I've played with him when it's been with friends of his, and it's like any other round of golf with three buddies who talk a lot about sports.' 'And then I've played with him when he has been with people in the political circle, congressmen or senators. He plays really fast. A round of golf with the president takes between two and a half hours and two hours 45 minutes because he's trying to get every minute out of every day that he possibly can.' Criticism that Trump spends too much time golfing at the expense of his presidential duties is wrong, according to Republican strategist Matt Parker, co-presenter of the Golf & Politics podcast. 'One of the first weekends after the inauguration, he was playing at Trump International West Palm Beach,' Parker says. 'When he teed off, he was working on a trade deal, and by the sixth hole the trade deal was done. Between shots, he's making phone calls and sending messages.' 'Nobody has had as big an impact on the game of golf as a president than Donald Trump,' Parker adds. 'He loves the game, and with his single-digit handicap he's arguably the most talented golfer we've ever had in the White House.' Rich Levine, another golfing pal of Trump's, told the Golf & Politics podcast that Trump is a most congenial club owner: 'He'll never criticise anyone… he is so positive to every member, every employee. [He] will tell you that you played great golf, even though you played terrible that day.' Yet beneath the surface bonhomie, Bedminster is a factional court where today's Republican politicians rise and fall. Betsy DeVos, US secretary of education in the first Trump administration, recalled how he chose the venue as the backdrop for assembling his cabinet. 'Apparently the president-elect had decided it made for better theater [sic] for his visitors to greet him on the [Bedminster] front steps,' she wrote in her memoir Hostages No More, adding: 'Trump had commandeered the clubhouse at Bedminster to have his meetings with potential cabinet secretaries […] Mitt Romney was in an interview when I arrived. James Mattis, Trump's future secretary of defense [sic], was in the green room.' One member says that Howard Lutnick, Trump's commerce secretary and architect of his controversial tariff agenda, endeared himself to Trump by being an active presence at Bedminster. Conversely, Jeff Sessions, Trump's attorney general between 2017 and 2018, made a less favourable impression. 'When Jeff Sessions showed up at Bedminster, he was like a deer in headlights,' the member added. 'It's not the main reason he fell out of favour with Trump, but it didn't help that he looked way over his head and was never seen at Bedminster again.' Critics of Trump say he treats Bedminster primarily as another moneymaking venture. Initiation fees are reportedly $350,000. 'If one person joins as a member, he's covered most of his property taxes!' says Pulitzer Prize-winning Trump biographer David Cay Johnston. 'Trump loses money with his British golf courses, so clubs like Bedminster become a further extension of anything he can do that will bring in money.' Eyebrows have also been raised over the club quite literally being a cash cow, qualifying for agricultural tax breaks by harvesting hay and maintaining a small herd of goats. Then there are the allegations from celebrities that Trump cheats at golf, frequently deploying mulligans (a rule allowing a player to retake a shot). Rocker Alice Cooper told Q Magazine in 2012: 'The worst celebrity golf cheat? I played with Donald Trump once. That's all I'm going to say.' Actor Samuel L Jackson said in 2016: 'We clearly saw him hook a ball into a lake at Trump National [Bedminster] and his caddy told him he found it!' Sportswriter Rick Reilly recounted a tale about Trump allegedly declaring himself the winner of a Bedminster tournament in his 2019 book Commander in Cheat: 'Trump happened to walk into the Bedminster clubhouse just as a worker was putting up the name of the newly crowned senior club championship winner on a wooden plaque. Trump had been out of town and hadn't played in the tournament, but when he saw the player's name, he stopped the employee. 'Hey, I beat that guy all the time [Trump said]. Put my name up there instead […] I would've beaten him.'' However, Trump's friends refute suggestions of foul play. 'He's 100 per cent a gentleman,' says Tom Bennison. 'I've played over 125 rounds of golf with him, and I've never personally witnessed any of that.' Yet Trump's devotion to Bedminster cannot be questioned. 'This is my real group,' Politico reported the president saying in leaked remarks to club members at a Bedminster cocktail reception in November 2016. 'These are the people that came here in the beginning, when nobody knew what this monster was gonna turn out to be.' Ivana Trump, his late first wife, is buried in a private plot on the club's estate. According to David Cay Johnston: 'Donald Trump's assertion is that he too will be buried at Bedminster. It's really his refuge.' One outstanding ambition for the president is for the National Golf Club Bedminster to host a PGA Championship. The club has hosted two LIV Golf tournaments – the controversial Saudi-backed breakaway championship – but plans to hold the 2022 PGA Championship there were scrapped after the January 6 storming of the US Capitol. Members say the president's family has since attempted to mend fences with the PGA. And given the way Donald Trump has confounded his critics over the past decade, who would bet against Bedminster? Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's DC prosecutor now seems doomed — and it couldn't happen to a nicer fellow
I've been feeling a bit sorry for the good old-fashioned conservative movement of yore lately. You remember those people who fought for Ronald Reagan's "three legged stool" of Republican ideology: small government, strong national defense and "traditional values," right? I'm thinking about folks like Richard Viguerie, Morton Blackwell and Phyllis Schlafly, the movement O.G.'s who slaved for years in the trenches training Republicans to embrace such arcane subjects as "free trade," "individual liberty" and "limited government" — only to have a billionaire demagogue throw that all out the window for libertinism, central planning and vendetta by police state. But there's really no need to feel sad for them. Blackwell and Viguerie are still around and now peddling Trumpism, as did Schlafly before she died in 2016. And we know that later Reagan revolutionaries like Ralph Reed and Roger Stone have been all-in on Donald Trump from the beginning. Still, they deserve more credit than they're getting for the ghastly state of American conservatism and the toxic politics we are living in today. Without them there would be no Trump. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign was a ramshackle affair with only a few advisers. Stone had been friends with him for years and had advised Trump on his aborted Reform Party campaign back in 2000. He was Trump's window into the right-wing movement that he was going to need to leverage if he wanted to win. Since Trump was more a CNN guy than a Fox News guy in those days, he needed some schooling. Stone did that for him, along with a fellow named Sam Nunberg who provided Trump with right-wing radio talking points in the early days. He quickly picked up important jargon that signaled his membership in the looney-tunes tribe. (Remember his blathering about military deserter Bowe Bergdahl and "common core" during that campaign? Those obscure topics came right out of right-wing talk radio.) There was a considerable battle during that campaign between more traditional conservative movement types who wanted someone like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and grassroots voters dazzled by Trump's star power. Ultimately, the trad-cons couldn't compete. While a few of them peeled off into Never-Trump land, for the most part the whole movement morphed into MAGA without a second thought. Those operatives who had previously followed the tutelage of O.G. conservatives flipped immediately, and put their training to work for the blustery, billionaire demagogue whose only ideology was about what was good for him. A case in point is the current acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Ed Martin. He had spent his adult life trying to succeed in conservative politics, working with right-to-life groups and other activists, as well as repeatedly running for office and failing. He got his law degree at Saint Louis University, a Jesuit school that has acknowledged the names and stories of enslaved Black Americans who built the university. Such DEI-style actions can only be an embarrassment to a MAGA true believer like Martin. Martin got his first break in politics after being hired as chief of staff to Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt in 2006, but was almost immediately enmeshed in an email scandal and was forced to resign after revelations that he'd lied about doing political work on the government's dime. That scandal ended Blunt's career, but Martin kept going. After several failed attempts at elective office, Martin became the head of the Missouri Republican Party in 2013 and shortly after that got involved with Schlafly's Eagle Forum. Schlafly was elderly and in failing health; her daughter and other members of the board accused Martin of coercing her into endorsing Trump and co-authoring a volume called "The Conservative Case for Trump" which, by ironic coincidence, was published one day day after Schlafly's death. Martin was ejected from Eagle Forum but started a rival organization he called "Phyllis Schlafly's Eagles." Yeah, we're talking about a class act here. From the moment of Trump's first victory, Martin has been a true-blue MAGA follower, appearing on any radio or TV show that will have him. He famously emerged as one of the most vociferous defenders of the Jan. 6 insurrection and its perpetrators, and finally got his reward by being named as acting U.S. attorney in D.C. and nominated for the permanent position, although he has no previous experience as a prosecutor or a judge. Martin's brief tenure has given him a reputation as the worst Trump appointment of 2025 — and that's really saying something. He has fired or demoted prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and dropped one prosecution for which he was still the government's attorney of record. Since he was a participant in the U.S. Capitol festivities that day, and tweeted through it as if it were Mardi Gras, I guess that was the least he could do. He has threatened several elected Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, over issuing alleged threats and has sucked up to Elon Musk with sycophantic public letters promising to protect him from his enemies. He now claims he "forgot" to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that he has appeared on Russian state media more than 150 times. His defamatory claims against former Biden officials are just par for the course: Martin has also taken it upon himself to intimidate Georgetown University, saying he won't hire any of the school's law graduates because of its DEI program, which garnered a strong "mind your own business" retort from the dean. He's even been sending weird threats to Wikipedia and medical journals, demanding that they drop their alleged liberal bias. Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. The attacks on medical journals may provide some context for an odd Truth Social post Trump sent out the other night, touting his lap-dog prosecutor's supposed commitment to making America — wait for it — healthy again. It seems that Martin is in cahoots with one of the other most-terrible Trump appointees, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On Tuesday, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., announced he would not vote for Martin's confirmation in the Judiciary Committee, citing his participation in the Jan. 6 riot. (Pretty gutsy, since we know that's a major trigger for Trump.) If Tillis stands firm, Martin's nomination won't make it to the floor. His 120-day interim appointment ends on May 20, so if Trump doesn't name someone else, the 24 judges of the D.C. District Court can name another interim choice until someone is confirmed or the president makes another interim appointment himself. So Ed Martin's brief and bizarre tenure in the spotlight may be coming to a close soon, but the old-school conservative movement should get credit for all the other operatives, saboteurs and radical henchmen they trained over the last few decades who now carrying out Trump's sweeping vision to turn America into a Christian nationalist autocracy and global pariah. Maybe that's what they really wanted all along.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ex-MSNBC host knocks NY Times for not representing 'the left,' calls for pro-Bernie Sanders voices in media
WASHINGTON D.C. - Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan took a swipe at The New York Times, accusing the paper of not efficiently representing the ideological "left" of the country. Speaking at Semafor's Innovating to Restore Trust in News summit, Hasan was asked on Thursday about whether he wanted to expand the reach of his start-up news brand Zeteo, which he launched last year after leaving MSNBC, so that news consumers across the political spectrum subscribe to his outlet. "I could've hired a bunch of Never-Trump Republicans, right? People who I'm friendly with. I didn't do that… Look, they're everywhere. They've got enough platforms," Hasan told Semafor's Max Tani on Thursday. "What's not doing fine when we're talking about the diversity of viewpoints- you know, we're obsessed with getting MAGA viewpoint out there. The New York Times will send 100 journalists in Iowa to speak to Trump voters, but what's missing, of course, is the left." Mehdi Hasan Quits Msnbc After Show Cancellation, Desiring More Freedom In Busy News Cycle "Isn't it crazy that three cycles in now, The New York Times does not have a Bernie Sanders-supporting columnist," he continued. "I mean, Jamelle Bouie, kind of, but there's no actual proper 'Bernie Bro' on the pages of The New York Times. Where's the ideological diversity there on the left?" The New York Times did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Read On The Fox News App The progressive media personality went on to tout his own hiring practices at Zeteo, his Substack and YouTube-based news platform, arguing that, unlike the Times, his outlet fairly represents the left. "So for me, I wanted to have voices from the left, the center left, the far left," Hasan said. "We've got John Harwood, who's a kind of mainstream liberal ex-CNN, ex-CNBC who writes very sympathetically [about the] Democratic Party very well. I'm a huge fan of John. That's why he was one of my first hires. I'm so proud that he joined Zeteo. We also have Naomi Klein, who's not seen in that vein. We have Owen Jones in the UK, who quit the Labour Party because [British Prime Minister] Keir Starmer was, you know, he saw him as a betrayer of the left," he continued. "So we have a great range of views across the left, center left, liberal left, but no- everywhere I've ever worked is filled with conservatives. I'm not gonna start a media company and say 'Come on in, conservatives!'" Joy Reid Warns Msnbc Viewers Fascism Is 'Already Here' In Her Final Show At Liberal Network Hasan left MSNBC in January 2024 following the cancelation of his show weeks prior. He was a sharp critic of Israel's response to the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack and its ongoing war in Gaza, while also condemning the Hamas attack itself. Critics accused MSNBC of stiffing one of the network's most prominent Muslim voices after Oct. 7. It was said after his weekend and Peacock shows were canceled that Hasan would remain with MSNBC as an on-air analyst and a fill-in host. However, the network rarely used him as he only made a single on-air appearance outside of his own program during that time, according to Grabien transcripts. Rachel Maddow Staffers To Be Laid Off As Part Of Msnbc Production CutsOriginal article source: Ex-MSNBC host knocks NY Times for not representing 'the left,' calls for pro-Bernie Sanders voices in media
Fox News
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Ex-MSNBC host knocks NY Times for not representing 'the left,' calls for pro-Bernie Sanders voices in media
WASHINGTON D.C. - Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan took a swipe at The New York Times, accusing the paper of not efficiently representing the ideological "left" of the country. Speaking at Semafor's Innovating to Restore Trust in News summit, Hasan was asked on Thursday about whether he wanted to expand the reach of his start-up news brand Zeteo, which he launched last year after leaving MSNBC, so that news consumers across the political spectrum subscribe to his outlet. "I could've hired a bunch of Never-Trump Republicans, right? People who I'm friendly with. I didn't do that… Look, they're everywhere. They've got enough platforms," Hasan told Semafor's Max Tani on Thursday. "What's not doing fine when we're talking about the diversity of viewpoints- you know, we're obsessed with getting MAGA viewpoint out there. The New York Times will send 100 journalists in Iowa to speak to Trump voters, but what's missing, of course, is the left." "Isn't it crazy that three cycles in now, The New York Times does not have a Bernie Sanders-supporting columnist," he continued. "I mean, Jamelle Bouie, kind of, but there's no actual proper 'Bernie Bro' on the pages of The New York Times. Where's the ideological diversity there on the left?" The New York Times did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. The progressive media personality went on to tout his own hiring practices at Zeteo, his Substack and YouTube-based news platform, arguing that, unlike the Times, his outlet fairly represents the left. "So for me, I wanted to have voices from the left, the center left, the far left," Hasan said. "We've got John Harwood, who's a kind of mainstream liberal ex-CNN, ex-CNBC who writes very sympathetically [about the] Democratic Party very well. I'm a huge fan of John. That's why he was one of my first hires. I'm so proud that he joined Zeteo. We also have Naomi Klein, who's not seen in that vein. We have Owen Jones in the UK, who quit the Labour Party because [British Prime Minister] Keir Starmer was, you know, he saw him as a betrayer of the left," he continued. "So we have a great range of views across the left, center left, liberal left, but no- everywhere I've ever worked is filled with conservatives. I'm not gonna start a media company and say 'Come on in, conservatives!'" Hasan left MSNBC in January 2024 following the cancelation of his show weeks prior. He was a sharp critic of Israel's response to the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack and its ongoing war in Gaza, while also condemning the Hamas attack itself. Critics accused MSNBC of stiffing one of the network's most prominent Muslim voices after Oct. 7. It was said after his weekend and Peacock shows were canceled that Hasan would remain with MSNBC as an on-air analyst and a fill-in host. However, the network rarely used him as he only made a single on-air appearance outside of his own program during that time, according to Grabien transcripts.
