Bulwark Takes - Trump Teams Up With Saudis On Golf Scam. PGA Surrendering.

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Tim Miller and Pablo Torre go over how the Saudis and LIV Golf are causing a scene in the sports world. How Trump is trying to come in and save the day, and how it's all about the money. Check out Pablo's show here: https://www.youtube.com/@pablotorrefindsout

Hey guys, Tim Miller with The Bulwark. I'm here with Pablo Torre of Pablo Torre Finds Out Fame and, you know, a bunch of other stuff. Dan Levitard stuff, ESPN World Sports Commentary. I saw you at Nicole Wallace yesterday or Monday. So you're coming into my space as a sports commentator. That's right. I'm peeing on all the trees, Tim, that you thought were just your urine. Guess what? I'm on there too. You're peeing on them now. now all right well i i was jealous of nicole but she got to hang out with you so i messaged you and like uh the main topic here is uh this meeting happening this weekend about the live golf tour and pga tour merging and trump you know wanting to be the deal man in that merge and some of our viewers might not give a fuck about golf, but I think this is very relevant in two senses. One, it is just going to be another example of a Trump grift.

So I think it's worth talking about that part about it. But more, it also is like the golf world has mirrored the political world in this decline in caring about principle or values or anything that we once held dear. So I want to just kind of cover both of those. But to do it, could you explain to any newbies the live origin story? Give us the TLDR on the live origin story. Yeah, happy to, because I've been following this story for years and it's crazy and we're numb to it, which is a good opportunity to remind people, hey, don't be numb to this. So the PGA Tour had a monopoly effectively on golf. And this is not to say that they were praiseworthy in any way, right? Like golf as an institution, lots of

old and ancient and yeah, flawed rituals around all sorts of demographic groups. That's not why I'm talking to you about the PGA Tour. We remember Tiger Woods' first master's dinner. That's right. Some of the jokes at his expense. Yes, yes. The same club, Augusta, that also had Condoleezza Rice as its first member of her demographic

also was making jokes about fried chicken and watermelon to Tiger Woods. An August institution unlike any other, truly. also was making jokes about fried chicken and watermelon to Tiger Woods, an august institution unlike any other, truly. But the reason PGA and its enterprise is relevant here is because they were disrupted, let's call it, let's use that term of art, by Saudi Arabia, by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and their private investment fund. So the Saudi Royal Wealth Fund came along and said, hey, you know what we're interested in? Stealing golf from America in order to make ourselves look better to Americans. And I frame it that way deliberately because on its face doesn't seem like it should be successful. But as a very wise person once told me once, the answer to all your questions is money.

And so what they did was they said, hey, we happen to have a desire to launder our reputation. We happen to be the kingdom that you may know from episodes like the bone sawing of journalists, Jamal Khashoggi, being one example in that genre. You may remember us from our treatment of gay people. We have executed them previously. You may remember us, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from our generally abysmal human rights record. But- Prisoning of political foes. In case you always forget, they sent people to Canada to kill a political foe. They tried to do another bone sawing that failed. That guy in Canada who they tried to kill, his teenage kids

are still in captivity in Saudi Arabia. We could go on and on. I just wanted to throw that one out there. We shouldn't just yada, yada, yada over the laundry list here. Truly, the laundry list they're trying to sports wash and launder because, by the way, also in that catalog is 9-11.

15 of the 19 hijackers. And that'll come back as I proceed deeper into this. But the point being, they said, hey, golfers, we're going to create a rival tour to compete with the PGA. And you take our money. You become employees of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And we're going to basically prove to all of America we're warm and cuddly. We're warm and fuzzy, you might even say, and come around to seeing our new modern way of life. And what happened was all these golfers

took the money. And so there was this big fracturing between the PGA and Live, which is what they called their rival tour, the Live Golf Tour, which is, spoiler alert, not going to wind up being a good product, but will be successful in drawing big names from the PGA. And so anyway, there was this fracturing. There was this seemingly blood feud between the PGA and Liv. But over time, what happens is Donald Trump. I mean, we want to get to the Trump part after one quick morality thing because my uh brother from another mother rory mcelroy is as i think kind of like the tragic figure in this story i see the resemblance yeah my little brother like really looks like him i i he's much handsomer than me um but uh the rory like takes the moral high ground in this case right and it's it's like, no, I'm not going to go take the money.

I'll take less money to stay on tour. These are bad people. We shouldn't do this. We should have standards and values. And like essentially what happens is we fast forward and now you get into the Trump world is like the public just kind of didn't care. And Rory's like competitors ended up making all the money and then getting everything. There was going to be a moment where people were going to be like, if you go take the Saudi money, you can't be in the Masters. You can't be in the US Open. And what ended up happening was everybody kind of folded. And they're like, well, the Masters US Open won't get as good ratings if we don't have the live people in there. And so Rory lost all the money and all the people that did

the bad thing got rewarded for it. And that brings us nicely to Donald Trump. Well, yeah. And I just want to add one more thing, too, because you just reminded me, right? 2022, this is all going down. And Phil Mickelson has an interview with the author Alan Shipnuck for a book he's working on. And Phil Mickelson gives away the game. OK, So we'll set the stage for the moral high ground here by quoting Phil Mickelson. He said, yes, the Saudi kingdom killed Khashoggi. Yes. They do all these things to gay people. Yes. They have a horrific human rights record. This is essentially a paraphrase. You can go look it up, but what we have here is an opportunity to disrupt the business of the PGA. And therefore I feel, Phil Mickelson, I am taking the money. Right. So that he says it, he says it, he says it all. They know it. And what happens is 2022,

you may also recall, was after 2021. And on January 6th of 2021, what happens is after the insurrection on the Capitol, a lot of the PGA tour stops. They say we can't do the Trump thing. We can't have we can't have events at Trump courses in Scotland, in America. And so Trump temporarily is out. And so the PGA, Tim, now is the disloyal party. And so what comes around in 2022 is it's ahead of September 11th, the anniversary. And there are families, 9-11 families protesting at Bedminster in New Jersey at Trump National, his golf course, ahead of a live golf tournament happening at Bedminster with Donald Trump as the business partner hosting the event. And so you have these families saying all the things about, wait a minute.

What happened to never forgetting? What happened to what the Saudi Arabians did to literally Americans in one of the worst, if not the worst, modern atrocity that everybody agreed to care about forever? And spoiler alert again, nobody really listened to them. You know, what we never forgot is that we love cash, is that cash is green. That's what we never forgot. And so if the Saudis want to have a golf tournament at Bedminster, it's good enough for the America First party. Yes. So America First now fast forward into the future. Donald Trump has been foreshadowing for two years, complaining about the PGA welcoming business

from live and Saudi Arabia. He's been saying a merger is inevitable. Anybody who is fighting live is going to lose. You might as well allow me now Donald Trump this week to basically moderate a detente, a business merger in which again, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump becomes a major winner because, yes, now his business at his golf courses, the things he love, he loves the most. They will get to profit in ways that are just very clearly corrupt, given that he's, you know, the president. Yeah. Guess what? PJ is coming back to Doral. You know, PJ is going back to bedminster uh whatever the fucking course is in california that he's got you know that you know you get additional stops there who the hell knows maybe the pga tour will accept trump coin in exchange for you know tickets to other events i go we don't we don't know the contours of the deal yet, but it seems like it's going to be

a financially beneficial one for him. Yeah. Look, I do want to just phrase this in terms that I think are pretty undeniable. It's really an amazing trick that Trump is pulling where he gets to bathe in nationalism while being the direct business partner to Saudi Arabia. Like, Tim, I'm trying to track what bigotries we want and which ones we don't. I'm trying to track when foreignness is supposed to feel foreign and not like one of us. And it seems like the only through line is literally, are you giving Donald Trump money? Yeah, because the Chinese don't count either. I was just interviewing Zeke fox about the crypto stuff and this guy justin sun this try this crypto magnet from china

uh who has some pretty illicit dealings himself is like dumping tons of money into the trump crypto and like that like somebody that would be disallowed from donating to his campaign as a foreign national somebody that obviously if he's giving money to the Bidens would have been seen as this huge attack on American patriotism. In addition to being corrupt, he's giving money to the Trumps and it's like nobody cares. He's taking money from the Saudis and the shit from Chinese crypto magnets from everybody. And I guess that's part of the America first deal because Trump is America now. Maybe that's really it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A bit of a fine print we're missing is that when we say America first, we really mean Trump and his associated golf courses and meme coins. It is, it is. Which is why I said it should have been Gulf of Trump. Just make it Gulf of Trump.

I know. Let's just cut to the chase here. Yeah, just make it Gulf of Trump. The Saudi Arabia thing, though, just to like like what's frustrating to me is that, look, I understand that we're all playing hypocrisy detective. Right. And sort of the big win of of the MAGA party has been to say, but you do this. We're bad, but you do bad stuff, too. What we're dealing with with the Saudi Arabia stuff and so many of the other things that you're outlining in terms of corruption is a reminder that not all corruption is created equal. And in fact, when it comes to dealing with Saudi Arabia, again, if you're to pick 9-11 as this thing that we all said was a pretty good standard for when America coalesced around really what felt like let's value our own country instead of the people that fund

terrorism, you would say that Saudi Arabia, OK, that's probably beyond the pale. But but we've been testing. And again, in sports, by the way, this is not just a Trump story. This is a sports story in which everybody, unfortunately, is thirsting for their money. It's a really interesting thing. So like basically in sports, by the way, as I always like to say, the lone monocultural institution we seem to have left these these these American institutions, everybody is putting a toe in the water of, OK, you say the cable bundle is being disrupted, which means that our billions of dollars in revenue as scheduled are going to be eroding or changing. Well, we need to find a new a new backer. And there is Saudi Arabia themselves thinking we got to switch over from oil at some point to something else,

maybe tourism, maybe entertainment. And they're saying if we can use sports to cover up atrocities that we have committed, then maybe that's our future. And so there's this just meeting of desperate interests. And it's a marriage made in hell. And sports is quietly across the board. They are quietly meeting and deciding, let's get some of that money in because we don't want to be left out. I'm Dante, and I'm taking you one step lower into hell. We're going even deeper right now, because maybe the one thing that the Saudis missed was that it turned out they didn't need to sports wash it at all. What it really turns out is that as long as they came with the money, everybody was going to eventually fold to

their interests anyway, particularly in a Trump 2.0 world. That's a particularly, you know, Tim, I can always count on you to make it even more staggeringly dystopian. Yeah. But you're right. Like when we joke about the fine print, they're not even bothering to hide it in the small cereal box font. We're seeing it in the newspaper. Like this is unsubtle, right? Like MBS, Yasir Al Rumayan, his head of sports. I mean, truly, it's again, I come from sports. I've been monitoring this story and I'm like, OK, cool. Liv is back in the news. All right. I'm familiar with that. What's happening?

Oh, Russia and the U S are meeting in Saudi Arabia. Like all, all of the streams are crossing. Like what the fuck is this? All the streams are crossing. So this takes me to my other final topic for you, because it's my obsession. And what I'm going to be talking to people that I'm thinking about a lot over the next year or two is that we, we being, you know, whatever the defenders of liberal democracy or Democrats in some cases, however you want to put it, have been, have been bleeding support from young men, from the bros, so to speak. And this conversation is like kind of, I think, speaks to the challenge. Right. Because if I'm coming into this as like a 22 year old dude vaping, you know, selling my fucking shit coin, my fart coin, you know.

Looking for nudes. I'm just looking for nudes mostly. Yeah. I'm like, I just stumbled upon this because i saw pablo on tv one time and i thought this was going to be some fucking sports talk i thought we're going to be talking about how good bryson dechambeau's driver is or some shit and i stumbled upon this and what i got is these two fucking millennial scolds talking to me about how like don't we have values anymore don't we you know and so i just i do wonder in like the context of sports like how you think the live thing has been resonating with people who come from not from

the 9-11 era like us but from from younger folks yeah i mean so first and foremost like on my show paul tory finds out as aforementioned like my entire mission there is to make sure I melt cheese on the broccoli. Right. Like you're going to get nutrition. Can I get some chocolate on the broccoli? We will. We will. Chocolate, some MSG, some Molly. Yeah, we can do some some microdose, some LSD. We'll do that, too. Whatever whatever you need to make this feel like you're enjoying yourself. We'll do it. Um, but I mean that seriously, right? Um, this stuff shouldn't just be scolding. It should also be truly like, um, a realization that there is great comedy. I'll be at a dark comedy in the absurdity of what we're seeing, which is a parallel to politics.

So how is sports, uh, a parallel to politics here? Well, what's happening is that a sacred institution that you loved growing up has been sold piece by piece to truly the modern equivalent of the Axis powers. It's the bad guys in the most on the nose movie you've ever seen. And the question is, as it is is to the voter are you having a better time consuming the product that's being sold piece by piece to the bad guys and live golf what i will uh confidently say is that no one really likes that shit it's not better now than it used to be chills when the music comes on you know you don't the vibes. It's not the old flashbacks of Payne Stewart in the fucking pants not trying to enshrine them. The point is, what you're getting as a result of the inshutification of everything due to outright, unprecedented corruption is not good for the normal person.

It's not good for the fan. It's not good for sports. And by the way, like the other thing that's funny to me, the comedy in this, Tim, was watching all of this happen as the Super Bowl just sort of like turned over to me. OK, what did the Super Bowl reveal? Lots of things. But one of them was that Donald Trump doesn't know ball. Tommy Tuberville, literally a football coach, does not know ball. He's they're both making shit up about Patrick Mahomes, right? In a way that should signal to you, these people are not who they claim they are. They're using sports as if they are the bros and we're the cucks. And in reality, they're revealing at every turn that they don't actually know what they're talking about.

And that part is just fundamentally, I'm just like, look, you can get me on the moral level. Maybe you disagree with my philosophies. Sure. But if you're telling me that those people are convincing you that they're actually diehard familiar with the shit you care about, we just aren't going to be able to agree on anything because they're revealing all the time that they're lying to you for their benefit and they're using you for spoiler alert their benefit yeah okay i like this this is how we're trying to reframe it i mean if you're the guy in the in the back-to-back world war champ shirt you know drinking the net pounding the natty light like this is this we're on the bad guy's side now.

You don't want this. We should be fucking kicking these guys ass. We don't need their Saudi fucking money and that we don't need them, you know, ruining our sports like this is our shit. All right. Get right. Maybe there's a maybe there's a jingoistic way to take this back from Trump. It's it's yes. Yes.

If I can give you the people who we should, I mean, again, look, Tim, I, I am just I'm from New York. Right. And so there's a parallel here to just like the New York thing. Yeah. Because 9-11, look, I'm not I'm not I am somebody who has found a way to truly like not have that be the thing I want to club people over the head with every day. But when it just comes to like the most cinematic version of patriotism, I'm like. Really, we're going to let those guys who did this help that guy who's doing this to us.

Like this is pick whatever movie that you love growing up. Pick fucking Rocky. Guess who we're on the side of now? Yvonne Drago. Guess. I mean, just come on, man. Like I grew up. I grew up.

I grew up with a sense of who the villains are. I'm not even asking you to to otherize anything. I'm just saying use the same shit that you grew up watching now just think of the world through that lens what do you see no they're plane jacking air force one from harrison ford right yeah all right be fucking harrison ford okay yeah instead of fucking con air by the way which is what this movie feels like all right that's pablo torre everybody uh subscribe to rv but go check out pablo torre finds out which i love it is all how should i put this it is sometimes a welcome reprieve from the dystopia that is my life every once in a while his shit overlaps with my dystopia and

that's good then too but um i enjoy it it's plain it's plain listening for me uh you know it's evergreen i was on with him right after the election. So if you want to go see how sad I sounded then. Oh, that was a good one. You guys can go listen to that app. Sad Tim Miller in person with a Denver Nuggets hat, a skew on his head contemplating. Is all the success I'm about to have in this post-election cycle really worth it?

And the answer is no. But I appreciate you all. Go listen to that episode of Pablo Torre Finds he finds out we'll be seeing y'all soon. See you, brother.