- Trump says he won't be watching the PGA Championship after they snubbed his Bedminster golf course.
- The PGA moved the tournament away from Trump's property in the wake of the January 6 insurrection.
- "People are really angry at what the PGA did to me by taking that tournament away," Trump said.
President Donald Trump has been an avid golf fan, and owner of golf courses, for decades. But he's sitting out the PGA Championship after the organization snubbed his Bedminster, New Jersey golf course for the event.
"I won't be watching it, no," Trump told Golf Digest's Michael Bamberger of the 104th PGA Championship, which kicked off Thursday at the Southern Hills Country Club outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
"I will not watch it. The only thing I like about it is that I love Oklahoma where, as you pointed out brilliantly, I have won 77 outta 77 counties. But I will not be watching it. No."
Trump, who owns 19 golf courses around the world, secured the biggest achievement for any golf course owner — getting to host one of the four major tournaments — in 2014, when the PGA announced it had selected the Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey, for the 2022 Championship.
But the PGA terminated their agreement to host the tournament at Bedminster in the wake of the January 6 insurrection without a backup plan, later settling on Southern Hills.
"My son, who's a great guy, called," Trump said, referring to his son Eric in describing how he learned the news. "My son said, 'Dad, they're canceling the PGA Championship [at Trump Bedminster]. I said, 'That's terrible. Really? Are you serious?' He said, 'Yeah, they're canceling it. Can you believe it?' I said, 'Not really. Let me think about that. That's something.'
"And then I had to get back to work and China and all this stuff, Russia, the country," Trump added. "But it's a hell of a thing when you hear that."
Golf legend Jack Nicklaus slammed the PGA's move as "cancel culture," telling Bamberger for a previous story on how the Bedminster deal fell apart that "Donald Trump may be a lot of things, but he loves golf and he loves this country."
"I would've loved to have done it and because I have the right place, I have the right location, the Tom Fazio course — he feels it was one of his best jobs he's ever done," Trump told Bamberger of Bedminster. "It's essentially right outside the Lincoln Tunnel, 20 minutes away. It's perfect and big. And I have the two courses there. We have parking for thousands of cars. It would have been phenomenal."
In the Golf Digest interview, Trump predicted that "97 percent" of PGA members would support him holding the championship at Bedminster and falsely said he had "nothing to do" with the riots at the Capitol on January 6.
"I'll tell you this ... if you took a poll inside the PGA, the 28,000 members of the PGA of America, I'd be 97 percent, I believe. I'd be way up there," Trump said. "And people are really angry at what the PGA did to me by taking that tournament away. And I had nothing to do with January 6th. They'd be very angry at what they did."
Trump spent months trying to overturn the 2020 election, publicly attacked Vice President Mike Pence for not overturning the election, and called on his supporters to participate in "wild" protests against Congress as it affirmed the outcome of the 2020 election. He was impeached by the House for inciting the January 6 riots, but acquitted in a Senate trial.
And in March 2022, a federal judge ruled in a records dispute between the House January 6 committee and conservative lawyer John Eastman that Trump and Eastman "likely" conspired to commit felony obstruction of Congress.
Trump is unlikely to get another major bid soon. His beloved Turnberry club in Scotland was removed from the list of potential hosts for the Open Championship for the "foreseeable future" in the wake of the insurrection.
Amid this frosty reception, Trump has turned his attention to LIV, a breakaway professional golf league with lofty ambitions that is backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. Trump's Bedminster club will host an LIV event in July.
Tiger Woods and other top golfers have closed ranks around the PGA amid the LIV's nascent challenge. So far, only Phil Mickelson, who won last year's PGA Championship, has responded to the league's entreaties.
Like Trump, Mickelson is also sitting out this year's tournament outside of Tulsa.