'Bad omen': Trump foreign golf club deal slammed as major 'conflict of interest'

01 May

President Donald Trump at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on February 22, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Although President Donald Trump continues to draw mockery and ridicule for insisting that war-torn Gaza can be turned into a major resort area, the Trump Organization's ambitions in another part of the Middle East — Qatar — took a major step forward on Wednesday, April 30 when, according to the Associated Press (AP), members of the Trump family "struck a deal" to "build a luxury golf resort" in that country.

The AP's Bernard Condon describes the Qatar deal as a "sign" that Trump family members have "no plans to hold back from foreign dealmaking during a second Trump Administration, despite the danger of a president shaping U.S. public policy for personal financial gain."

Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), is attacking the deal as a major conflict of interest for President Trump. Condon quotes Bookbinder as saying, "You want a president making decisions that are in the best interest of the United States, not his bottom line."

Condon reports, "In addition to a Saudi Arabian partner, called Dar Global, the planned resort north of the Qatari capital of Doha will be developed by a Qatari company called Qatari Diar, which is owned by the Qatari government. That would appear to violate the Trump Organization's much weaker, second-term ethics pledge that, while it would pursue foreign deals, none would include foreign governments."

The Qatar deal is receiving a great deal of reactions on X, formerly Twitter.

CREW tweeted, "The Trump Organization has agreed to a deal with a Qatari government-owned firm to back a development in the country, two weeks before President Trump is set to travel to Qatar on a state visit. See a conflict of interest there?"

Newsweek noted, "The announcement of a golf resort in Qatar underscores the deepening ties between Trump's affiliated company and Gulf nations."

Democratic activist Susie Bradford posted, "Why does he keep getting away with this??"

U.K.-based national security researcher Kyle Orton tweeted, "Decision time for pro-Trump, anti-Qatar Israelis and others: has Trump joined the legions on the payroll of a terrorist regime, or had the plucky little shaykhdom been hard done by and Trump is recognising this through deft golf course diplomacy?"

Upstate New York-based X user Laura Noonan wrote, "DJT is one huge conflict of interest!"

The Real Deal's Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt argued, "Is no one going to ring alarm bells over a sitting president conducting business with a terror-backing foreign country that has been carefully buying influence across our government, academia, media, and business sectors?"

Journalist Eitan Fischberger wrote, "Bad Omen for President Trump’s Upcoming Visit to Qatar."

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