Trump Blasts New York Times Over Trump National Doral Golf Club Photo: ‘This Image Is Not Doctored’
President Donald Trump is taking aim at The New York Times after the newspaper published a photo of his Trump National Doral Miami golf resort that he claims was deliberately edited to make the property look run-down.
Trump launched two separate attacks on Truth Social Monday over a photo used in a New York Times article about the Doral resort. The image shows the clubhouse exterior with a noticeably weathered, yellowed and darkened appearance.
Trump compared that image with another photograph showing the same building looking considerably cleaner and brighter.
He accused the Times of intentionally using an unflattering image of his Florida golf property and called the newspaper “Artificial News” and a “CROOKED outfit.”
Trump also turned his criticism toward the journalists involved with the story, attacking New York Times White House correspondents Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman.
Later in the day, Trump returned to the issue, claiming the newspaper had “doctored” the photograph to make Trump National Doral look as bad as possible.
The New York Times, however, pushed back on that accusation.
A Times spokesperson told The Daily Beast that the photograph was not altered and said it was taken by a Times photographer in 2020.
The controversy comes as Trump National Doral continues to play a prominent role in the president’s political and business worlds.
The Miami-area resort has hosted major professional golf events, including LIV Golf Miami, and has been the subject of controversy before.
In 2019, Trump publicly denied reports of bedbugs at Doral, calling the allegations a false rumor. The issue dated back to a 2016 lawsuit filed by a guest who claimed a room in the resort’s Jack Nicklaus Villa was infested with bedbugs. That case was eventually settled.
The resort has also faced scrutiny from health inspectors. In 2015, inspectors reportedly found live flying insects in the golf club’s kitchen, along with live cockroaches near a food-preparation area.
The New York Times’ recent article used photographs of the Doral property, including the clubhouse and a weathered-looking fountain, as part of a broader examination of Trump’s presidency and the changing standards surrounding presidential behavior.
The Doral resort has also been at the center of a previous presidential controversy.
During Trump’s first term, he proposed hosting the Group of Seven summit at his private Florida golf resort. The idea generated bipartisan criticism, and Trump ultimately abandoned the proposal.
Now, Trump plans to host the G20 summit at Trump National Doral in December.
That decision has received considerably less attention than the G7 proposal did during his first term.
The debate over the Doral photograph may seem relatively minor compared with the larger controversies surrounding Trump’s presidency. But critics of the president argue that it illustrates a broader pattern in which behavior and controversies that once would have generated significant political outrage have become increasingly normalized.
For Trump, however, the issue is much simpler: He believes The New York Times deliberately chose a misleading photograph of one of his most prominent golf properties.
And the Times says the photograph was authentic and was not doctored.
That leaves the photo itself at the center of the latest battle between Trump and the newspaper.
Anyone with a molecule of a brain knows Trump is not a demonrat, and would never stand for anything he own or is associated with to look like that.
It’s a general but highly useful way of navigating anything Trump says. Here goes: Whatever he says, the exact opposite is true.