Scottish secretary of state serves Trump some cold haggis when he tries to steal Open golf tourney

The British Open is the oldest golf tournament in the world. With a few timeouts for war, it’s been cranking along each year since 1860. Originally the Open was played at a single course in Scotland, but for decades the location has been selected from a rotating list of traditional “links” courses in the United Kingdom. Already on that list is Turnberry, the Scottish course that last hosted the Open in 2009—five years before it was purchased by Trump. It’s unclear if Turnberry remains in the queue. In any case, waiting around for the course to come up again means that it could be years before the  pros set foot on Trump’s turf. So Trump set out to remedy this—by using the U.S. ambassador in an attempt to grab this prestigious tourney.

Sure, Trump is shoveling millions directly into his pocket from his campaign, and every one of his 275 visits to Mar-a-Lago or Doral brings him an instant cash windfall direct from the pockets of taxpayers. But the Open represents not just an enormous single payday, but a chance to return respectability to a course best known in recent years for being kept afloat through a scheme to route Air Force jets there and collect on fees from stranded military. And since this is Trump, with Trump-appointed ambassadors, the effort actually made it to a meeting with the secretary of state for Scotland. Where it was, very appropriately, given a mashie niblick to the face. 

As The New York Times reports, Trump’s attempt to jump ahead in the scheduling reached American ambassador to the U.K. (and co-owner of the New York Jets) Robert Wood Johnson IV. People with more experience in diplomacy than Wood—meaning people with any experience at all—warned him that it wouldn’t be within the bounds of international diplomacy to go begging multimillion dollar favors for a business owned by the boss. Among other things, it would be unethical. 

Chief among those pointing out this issue was former acting ambassador Lewis Lukens, a career diplomat who has worked with the U.K. for years. However, since that “ethics” thing is unfamiliar to anyone from this White House, Wood trotted right along and introduced the idea of handing Trump the tourney.

The proposal got a very cold reception from Scottish Secretary of State David Mundell. And generated the expected results: Lukens was fired.

Wait … check back through that sequence again. Yep, ambassador who tried to score a giant payday for Trump by leaning on the Scottish secretary of state remains. Deputy who tried to tell him that this was unethical and to prevent this national embarrassment dismissed. In the grand tradition of the Trump State Department, Lukens was forced out just short of the end of his assignment.  

Which is just as expected. After all, considering how Trump actively campaigned to hold the G7 at his own Doral resort—sorry, that would be Trump’s moldy, smelly, garbage-strewn Doral resort—it was already clear that leveraging government authority to secure business for Trump is perfectly okay.

from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/3hsLbC6