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President Donald Trump blamed Democrats for what he called a “nasty rumor” of bedbugs at his Miami-area resort that he has promoted for the next Group of Seven meeting in 2020, and said that Brazil’s leader has the “complete support” of the U.S. as fires burn in the Amazon rainforest.
DORAL AND BEDBUGS
On Twitter, Trump again promoted his Doral golf resort in Florida for next year’s G-7 meeting, a possibility he raised during this year’s gathering in Biarritz, France.
He said “Radical Left Democrats” had spread a rumor that there were bedbugs at the resort. As the Washington Post writes, the resort was sued in 2016 by a guest who said he’d been bitten multiple times by bed bugs. The Trump Organization denied the allegation, without going into detail, wrote the Post. It settled the case in 2017.
On Monday Trump said he wasn’t concerned about appearing to promote his own brand, but watchdogs call the potential move a failure of ethics. “This president is now openly using the power of his office to essentially do an ad to prop up a floundering business he owns,” said Jordan Libowitz, the communications director for the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Read: Trump touts his struggling Doral club in Miami as site for 2020 G-7 summit.
BOOST FOR BOLSONARO
Trump said on Twitter that President Jair Bolsonaro has the “full and complete support of the USA!” as the Brazilian government said it would reject aid from the world’s wealthiest nations to fight the fires.
Read: Brazil rejects G-7’s $40 million to fight Amazon fire, likening gesture to colonialism.
It was at least the second such offer from Trump, who said last week that the U.S. was “ready to assist.”
Bolsonaro’s critics have accused him of taking a lax approach at best to preventing deforestation. In rebuffing the G-7 aid offer, Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo said mechanisms to fight deforestation already exist under the United Nations climate convention.
Now see: Tim Cook donates nearly $5 million to charity, and Apple pledges aid for Amazon rain forest
Trump also said he hoped Giuseppe Conte would remain prime minister of Italy. Reuters reported Monday that Italy’s 5-Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party were set to agree on outgoing Prime Minister Conte’s returning as head of a new government.
FED TWEET
Trump has frequently criticized the Federal Reserve over monetary policy, jawboning the central bank to aggressively cut interest rates. Tuesday was no exception, with the president tweeting that the Fed “loves watching our manufacturers struggle with their exports to the benefit of other parts of the world.”
Trump has previously blamed the Fed for what he says is keeping the value of the U.S. dollar DXY, +0.16% high and putting companies like Boeing BA, -1.20% and Caterpillar CAT, -0.91% at a disadvantage. The Fed does not directly control the dollar, but lower interest rates can weaken the value of a country’s currency.
Now see: Fed should refuse to ‘play along’ with Trump’s trade war: William Dudley
A BIAS TOWARD DEMOCRACY?
As a dinner discussion in Biarritz on Saturday turned “rough and tumble,” the Washington Post and others reported on Tuesday, and President Trump again pressed the argument that such topics as Iran’s nuclear-arms threat cannot productively be navigated without Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the table, fellow G-7 summit attendees wondered aloud whether a democratic approach to governance should not be a prerequisite for participation.
As other leaders at the dinner argued in the affirmative, Trump, according to the Post’s reporting, crossed his arms and “became more combative.”
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