BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Donald J. Trump praised the Saudi Arabian backers of a controversial new golf event Thursday, calling them his pals, whereas criticizing the standard PGA Tour.

The previous president, carrying a white golf shirt and his signature crimson baseball cap emblazoned along with his acquainted marketing campaign slogan, spoke briefly earlier than teeing off within the pro-am section of the LIV Golf occasion on the Trump Nationwide Golf Membership in Bedminster, N.J., which he owns.

“I’ve recognized these folks for a very long time in Saudi Arabia and so they have been pals of mine for a very long time,” Trump stated after taking apply swings on the driving vary. “They’ve invested in lots of American corporations. They personal huge percentages of many, many American corporations and admittedly, what they’re doing for golf is so nice, what they’re doing for the gamers is so nice. The salaries are going to go manner up.”

The LIV Golf sequence is bankrolled by the sovereign wealth fund, which is overseen by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In 2018, throughout Trump‘s presidency, American intelligence officers concluded that Prince Mohammed had licensed the homicide of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and journalist with the Washington Publish. Trump, who criticized the Saudis on the marketing campaign path earlier than his election in 2016, resisted their conclusions.

The Bedminster membership had beforehand been scheduled to host the P.G.A. Championship in 2022, however the P.G.A. of America moved it to Oklahoma after the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, saying that holding it at Bedminster can be “detrimental to the P.G.A. of America model.” (The P.G.A. of America, which is separate from the PGA Tour, later reached a settlement with the Trump Group.) Since then, Trump has sided with the upstart golf tour.

It’s not recognized how a lot LIV Golf organizers paid Trump for using his membership for the 54-hole event, the tour’s third occasion. However gamers who’ve defected to the profitable tour have been assured giant sums and have resigned or been suspended from the PGA Tour for enjoying in it. As of now, LIV golfers can nonetheless play within the 4 main tournaments, which aren’t run by the PGA Tour, though that would change sooner or later.

“The PGA was not beloved by quite a lot of the gamers, as , for a very long time,” Trump stated. “Now they’ve an alternate and no person ever would have recognized it was going to be a gold rush, like this. I feel no person ever knew that they had been going to be paying signing bonuses. The prize cash was going to be a lot greater, , 4, 5, six instances greater. So, as an alternative of 1,000,000 {dollars} you win 5 or seven or eight. Some huge cash and it’s even going up. However the PGA Tour hasn’t acted effectively.”

Throughout a quick interview with a handful of reporters earlier than he went to the apply placing inexperienced, Trump was requested about protests involving the households of victims of the 9/11 terrorist assaults. The protesters, who plan to stage a counter occasion on Friday on the similar time the primary event begins, consider, together with others, that the Saudi authorities backed the organizers of the assaults.

“Properly, no person’s gotten to the underside of 9/11, sadly,” Trump stated. “They need to have. As to the maniacs that did that horrible factor to our metropolis, to our nation, to the world, so no person’s actually been there.”

Trump was scheduled to play in Thursday’s occasion in a bunch that included skilled golfers Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of the Public Funding Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, and his son Eric Trump.

“I’ll by no means really feel like an extended hitter with that group,” he stated.