WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to visit Ireland next month to attend the Irish Open golf tournament at his golf course in Doonbeg in County Clare on the country’s Atlantic coast, according to a White House official.
The trip is the most recent example of how the president blurs the line between official business and travel in ways that can benefit his family business. His sons have taken over day-to-day control of the Trump Organization, but the September trip once again lays bare how Trump has leveraged his second term to pad his family’s profits in a variety of ways.
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Trump is scheduled to be in Ireland on Sept. 12 and 13 and will join an event with U.S. embassy workers and business officials before attending the golf tournament at Trump International Golf Links Ireland in Doonbeg, according to the White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Trump's course in Bedminster, New Jersey, hosted a LIV golf tournament in August. Another Trump course at Doral in South Florida is scheduled to host a PGA event, the Cadillac Championship, in March 2028, and Trump has talked about his course in Turnberry, Scotland, hosting the British Open, which it last did in 2009, before Trump bought the resort. A return of the British Open to that property continues to face major logistical hurdles.
Last summer, Trump went to Scotland for five days to golf at Turnberry and later inaugurated a new Trump golf course in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire. The White House refused to call that midsummer jaunt a vacation, but insisted it was a working trip — and Trump found time between games to talk about trade with then-British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Trump frequently travels to golf courses he owns in Florida and New Jersey, as well as a course in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. But he is not known to take lengthy holidays.
“Don’t take vacations. What’s the point?” he wrote in his 2004 book, “Think Like a Billionaire.”
Trump’s trip to Ireland will have him leaving the country right after he tries to rally support for Republicans in the November elections as the GOP holds its first-ever national convention ahead of the midterm elections. The unusual event, scheduled in Dallas on Sept. 9-10, was Trump’s idea to try to galvanize support by staging something similar to the conventions both parties normally have before presidential elections.
As recently as last summer, Trump derided Barack Obama for flying long distances for golf as president — something Trump himself is now doing.
“They talked about the carbon footprint and then Obama hops onto a 747, Air Force One, and flies to Hawaii to play a round of golf and comes back,” Trump said last year.
Aside from the Scotland getaway, the longest stretch of downtime Trump took last year was when he went to his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in early December and stayed past Christmas — though even that trip featured visits by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The trip was first confirmed by the New York Post.
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Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
