WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. will host next year’s Group of 20 summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida, arguing it was “the best location” for the high-stakes international gathering but insisting his family's business "will not make any money on it.”
In his first term, Trump tried to host a separate global summit at the club, but backed down after criticism from his own party about the propriety of doing so. Now, though, Trump rarely travels domestically without golfing at or staying in properties bearing his name and has faced very little political blowback.
Trump's sons have taken over running the Trump Organization while their father is in the White House. But the president has nonetheless prided himself in blurring the line between domestic and global policy and generating profits for the Trump brand.
He's actively promoted his $TRUMP meme coin and even hosted the top 220 investors in it for a swanky dinner in May at his golf property in Virginia. The president made his first foreign trip to Saudi Arabia, after his sons crisscrossed the region drumming up business for the family's other cryptocurrency ventures. Trump also went to Scotland to inaugurate his new golf course there.
The G20 is made up of some of the world’s major economies, the European Union and the African Union. Hosting the G20 at Doral would be an especially striking example of using the presidency to enrich his family, but Trump wasted little time defending it.
“I think everybody wants it there,” he said when asked if the global summit would be at his golf club and spa. Trump noted that the conference would be occurring in December 2026, a time of year when hotels in South Florida are often more full, and said that Doral had the space and was ideally suited because of its close proximity to the city’s airport.
The United States hasn't hosted a G20 since it was held in Pittsburgh in 2009. The president suggested that organizers had requested the summit be at his property, but didn’t elaborate. He said each delegation from different countries “will have its own building.”
“It’s the best location, it’s beautiful, beautiful everything,” Trump said, while adding, “We will not make any money on it.”
“We’re doing a deal where it’s not going to be money, there’s no money in it. I just want it to go well,” Trump said. “I think it'll be really a beautiful thing.”
He also called Doral “very, very successful, one of the most successful properties in the country.”
Miami Mayor Frances Suarez, who attended Friday's G20 site announcement in the Oval Office, said it “puts us on the global map" but also acknowledged that, for the area, “It's a tremendous boom for your economy.”
“As the president knows," Suarez added. "He has multiple hospitality assets.”
Trump also said Friday that he would not be attending this year's G20 in South Africa, but planned to send Vice President JD Vance in his place.
A military aide places a G20 sign in the Oval Office as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent walks past as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump listens as Miami Mayor Francis Suarez speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025, in Washington, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent listens. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
BERLIN (AP) — Standing on an open truck making its way through Berlin, Anahita Safarnejad turned to the crowd of Iranian protesters marching behind her and took the microphone.
“No more dictatorship in Iran, the mullahs must go!” she shouted. Hundreds of voices echoed her slogan with the same sense of urgency and desperation.
Across Europe, thousands of exiled Iranians have taken to the streets to shout out their rage at the government of the Islamic Republic which has cracked down on protests in their homeland, reportedly killing thousands of people.
Women have taken a prominent role in organizing the protests abroad, raising their voices against the theocratic government that discriminates against them.
But beyond the anger, there’s also a sense of fear and paralysis. Iran's government has been shutting down the internet and limiting phone calls for days, making it nearly impossible for Iranians in the diaspora to find out if their families back home are safe.
Safarnejad, 34, fled Iran seven years ago. She came to Berlin to study theater but now works in a bar when she's not attending one of the almost-daily protests in the German capital.
Since the demonstrations broke out in Iran in late December, Safarnejad said she's been living in two different realities that are almost impossible to combine. The easygoing hipster life of her new hometown is a jarring contrast to the bloody protests in Iran that she's been following every minute she doesn't have to work, glued to her phone for the latest updates.
While she was initially almost euphoric that the current uprising would finally bring freedom to Iran and she'd be able to go back home, her sense of hope has turned into horror.
Safarnejad hasn't spoken to her brother, also a protester, since communications with Iran were cut off. She's been scouring video on social media showing piles of dead bodies to see if he's among the corpses.
“I'm desperate and don't know how to keep going anymore,” she cried, tears rolling down her cheeks, as she spoke to The Associated Press during Wednesday's Berlin protest.
“I can’t really switch off. I can’t really stop reading the news either," she added, her voice breaking. “Because I’m waiting all the time for the internet to be available so I can get some answers from my family.”
The young woman's horror is felt by many of the more than 300,000 Iranians living in Germany — one of the biggest exile communities in Europe and similar in numbers to France and Britain. Many of them still have family ties to their homeland, even if they left decades ago.
Mehregan Maroufi's Persian cafe and bookstore in Berlin has become a place of solace for Iranians to share their grief without many words — because they know they are all living through the same nightmare.
Maroufi, the daughter of the late Iranian author Abbas Maroufi, welcomes Iranians and everyone else at the Hedayat Cafe, where she serves Persian tea with sweets such as chocolate cake topped with barberries. She lends an ear to anyone who has to get worries off their chest.
“For some, the emotions are still too high and too strong, so to speak, and it’s impossible to talk," the 44-year-old says, adding that she, too, had to force herself to open the cafe on some mornings because the violent images coming out of Iran sucked away all her energy.
“But at least you can find compatriots here. You can talk to a little, and that helps,” she said.
She says she's been listening to and learning from the convictions her fellow Iranians express when they talk about their dreams of an Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that — due to the uprising — now seems closer that ever before.
While most in the diaspora agree that the theocracy has to be toppled, ideas of what a new Iran should look like differ widely.
Adeleh Tavakoli, 62, joined a demonstration outside Britain’s Parliament in London earlier this week. She hasn't been back to Iran in 17 years but has spent decades protesting from afar against the Islamic Republic.
But with the latest wave of protests, she hopes that the Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah ousted by the Islamic Revolution in 1979, will return to power. If he does, she said, she has her bag packed and is ready to get on the first flight.
“For 47 years, our country has been captured by a terrorist regime,” she said. “We’ve been the voice of Iran. All we want is our freedom and to get rid of this horrible dictatorship.”
For Maral Salmassi, who came to Germany as a child in the 1980s, history explains the calls by exiled Iranians for Pahlavi to lead the country.
“As an Iranian, as someone who comes from this culture and knows its culture and history, I can only say that we have had kings and queens for thousands of years. It is our culture," said Salmassi. She is the chairwoman and founder of the Zera Institute think tank in Berlin, which researches democracy, radicalization and extremism.
She added that Iranians make up a multi-ethnic country and "to bring them all together again, we need a constitutional monarchy that symbolically and traditionally represents our identity and reunites everyone ... and then a democratic, federal parliament where everyone is represented equally.”
However, not everyone is convinced by Pahlavi. Maryam Nejatipur, 32, who also joined the protest in Berlin, thinks her country should avoid a cult of personality.
“We don’t need something like Khamenei again. We don’t need one person,” to lead us, she said, as she burnt a portrait of the Ayatollah and used the flames to light a cigarette — an act that's become a symbol of Iranian resistance.
Safarnejad, who led the recent Berlin protest, agrees.
“I don’t belong to the left, I’m not a liberal, I’m not a monarchist,” she stressed. “I’ve been there for women’s rights, I’m for human rights, I’m for freedom.”
Fanny Brodersen and Ebrahim Noroozi, in Berlin, and Brian Melley in London contributed reporting.
Protester Adeleh Tavakoli, left, demonstrates outside the House of Parliament, in London, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
People take part in a rally in support of anti-government protests in Iran, Berlin Germany, Wednesday, June 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Iranian Mehregan Maroufi poses for a photo before an interview with the Associated Press in her cafe in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Iranian Maryam Nejatipur 32, poses for a photo after a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Iranian Anahita Safarnejad, 34, poses for a photo after a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
