The resort is at the center of a national furor.
The Trump National Doral in Miami, which was chosen as the site of the next G-7 summit, is at the center of a national furor.
“So is he a cornered rat that is going to grab all of the cash he can before he jumps ship?” Joy Behar asked on “The View” Friday.
“Thank goodness they found a hotel with a golf course. You know how hard they are to find in the United States?” Anderson Cooper said on CNN Thursday night.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was asked about the decision to have the G-7 at a Trump resort Friday and she said, “This is a decision taken by the American president. I haven't had time to deal with this yet. We will take a close look at his invitation and my intention is to attend the summit."
The Doral has 643 rooms in a cluster of bungalows and a world-class golf course called “The Blue Monster.”
CBS News Travel Editor Peter Greenberg has stayed at the resort many times.
"They have different units there on the actual property and each unit may have 20 to 30 rooms, so, what Trump is saying is that this lends itself to different delegations from different countries because they each have their own building," Greenberg said.
But the Doral is reportedly in “steep [financial] decline,” according to The Washington Post.
It has an occupancy rate of just 53% and revenue dropped from $125 million in 2016 to $75 million last year, according to CNBC.
A Florida state health inspection found 52 violations in 2017 and 2018 including: a salad bar “lacking adequate sneeze guards,” food left out overnight and single-use gloves not changed “when damaged or soiled.”
In 2019, the resort cleaned up its act and had “no high-priority violations.”
In 2016, a guest sued claiming his room was infested with bedbugs. The case was settled out of court and the president tweeted: “no bedbugs at Doral...false and nasty rumor.”
There will be massive security during the summit, but last year there was a serious breach when a 42-year-old man, said to be obsessed with first lady Melania Trump, fought a running gun battle with police in the lobby until he was taken down.
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