President Trump, using the power of the presidency to intervene in global sports diplomacy, on Thursday deepened his efforts to broker an elusive agreement involving the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league that could ultimately benefit his family’s golf courses.
For the second time this month, Mr. Trump hosted key negotiators at the White House to try to repair a bitter breach between the prestigious American men’s golf tour and the insurgent league bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Thursday’s meeting was particularly notable as it included not only Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, who visited the Oval Office in early February, but also Yasir al-Rumayyan, who is LIV’s chairman and the head of the sovereign wealth fund, as well as the golf great Tiger Woods.
The session underscored what ethics experts say is a growing pattern of conflicts of interest in Mr. Trump’s second term. While it is common for American presidents to promote American businesses, like the PGA Tour, Mr. Trump’s starring role in these negotiations is highly unusual because the outcome could benefit his own company. The Trump family controls one of the world’s finest portfolios of golf courses and has hosted tournaments for the PGA Tour and, more recently, LIV.
A lasting agreement involving the rival circuits could once more lead the sport’s top figures to compete against one another at the Trump family’s courses, potentially offering Mr. Trump’s company millions of dollars and greater prestige. It could also require some involvement by the Justice Department, whose antitrust enforcers have been attuned to whether a deal would stifle competition in the United States.
At a Black History Month reception on Thursday, Mr. Trump, who has long envisioned himself as a sports power broker, appeared giddy to have hosted Mr. Woods and the golfer Adam Scott, who are both members of the PGA Tour’s board. He said he had participated in “interesting discussions” with his visitors, but he did not elaborate.
Thursday’s meeting was at least the third time in 16 days that Mr. Trump has been in touch with Mr. al-Rumayyan. Earlier this month, the Saudi official called into the president’s meeting with Mr. Monahan and Mr. Scott. On Wednesday, Mr. al-Rumayyan sat in one of the front rows as the president addressed a conference in Miami Beach sponsored by a foundation associated with the wealth fund. He later flew to Washington for the private meeting.
The wealth fund did not comment on Thursday’s session, but, approached at a dinner in Florida hours later, Mr. al-Rumayyan said it was “good.” He did not answer a question about whether the meeting had led to progress toward a deal.
In a statement, Mr. Monahan, Mr. Scott and Mr. Woods described the meeting as “a constructive working session” and said they were ”committed to moving as quickly as possible” toward an agreement with the Saudis.
Mr. Trump’s decision to push for a deal fits into an increasingly clear pattern of commingling his family’s personal financial interests with his official role. While presidents are exempt from conflict of interest laws that prohibit federal employees from taking actions that directly affect their financial holdings, in general other presidents have voluntarily honored that standard.
Just days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, he launched a digital coin called $TRUMP, and he has continued promoting it since taking office. Also since re-entering the White House, he has helped drive traffic to Truth Social, the social media platform run by Trump Media, a firm in which he is the majority shareholder, by using it to communicate about his presidency. Trump Media has also just announced that it will expand into financial services products that industry experts say would require approvals by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.
White House spokespeople have said that Mr. Trump does not tolerate conflicts of interest but have not answered specific questions about whether he is engaging in them.
The Trump family’s golf courses are run by the Trump Organization, controlled by the president’s two oldest sons. The company has said that the president will have no say in the company’s day-to-day decisions in his second term, and that it will not engage in any transactions or contracts with a foreign government, except ordinary transactions.
But ethics and business experts said Thursday that the Trump Organization still stands to benefit from a deal that heals golf’s rifts. While the Trump family’s personal stake seems apparent, the government or public interest “is not at all clear,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor who specializes in government ethics at Washington University in St. Louis.
If a deal is subject to antitrust or other federal oversight, she said, Mr. Trump’s intervention “is even more troubling because it may signal to federal regulators that they should fall in line” behind it.
The Trump family has business interests involving the Saudis well beyond golf. The $925 billion sovereign wealth fund Mr. al-Rumayyan leads has bankrolled a private equity fund set up by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Less than two months before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the Trump Organization announced two real estate projects in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
Mr. Trump, who relishes his own golf rounds, has been eager to rehabilitate a sport that has been in assorted degrees of fracture for several years. Although tempers have eased more recently, LIV’s 2022 launch effectively required elite players to choose a side: the establishment-friendly, if less lucrative, PGA Tour, or the high-rolling, renegade option that LIV dangled.
The PGA Tour, desperate to protect its power and well aware of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, depicted the choice as a moral one. LIV players, many of them made far richer after they signed with the Saudis, framed their defections in gentler terms around such matters as playing schedules and tournament formats.
Throughout, Mr. Trump proved a gleeful cheerleader for the Saudi-backed tour. In a 2022 interview, he brushed aside concerns about the Saudi government’s human rights abuses and portrayed the wealth fund’s swelling interest in global sports as an authentic and sound investment.
“What they’re doing with LIV is very important,” Mr. Trump said then, while also criticizing the PGA Tour’s approach to negotiating with the Saudis. “They’re putting a lot of effort into it and a lot of money into it, as you see.”
Months after those comments, amid litigation, the tour and the wealth fund started secret talks and stunned golf in June 2023 with a surprise announcement of a truce, and the ambition of combining the business ventures of the rival circuits.
Their accord, however, encountered one complication after another, especially concerns among antitrust regulators in Washington. During President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s term, the two sides submitted term sheets for a $1.5 billion investment by the Saudis into the PGA Tour’s newly developed commercial arm.
But the Justice Department did not complete its review of the Saudi transaction before Mr. Trump took power last month. And Mr. Trump plunged into the talks as the tour and the wealth fund contemplated paths to a transaction that could have been considered nonstarters under Mr. Biden’s antitrust enforcers.
It is not clear whether any deal that emerges will allow LIV to survive as a stand-alone brand. The circuit has struggled to draw audiences and revenue.
PGA Tour leaders have welcomed Mr. Trump’s role in the negotiations, which they said they had sought. Mr. Monahan said last week that the PGA Tour’s flagship circuit, which last played at a Trump property in 2016, could return to the family’s courses.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from Washington. Julie Tate contributed research.
