It’s hard to believe Donald Trump & Carlos Gimenez

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As we learn more and more about billionaire Donald Trump‘s proposal to run the Crandon Golf Course on Key Biscayne for the next 99 years, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe either The Donald or his biggest county champion, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Mr. Giveaway” Gimenez.

Let’s start with Trump, not because it’s any easier to doubt him but because Ladra cares less. And you should, too. He is not elected to represent us. He is a ruthless businessman who only represents his own bottom line and who didn’t get to where he is by playing nice and getting the raw end of any deal. We do not expect him to be completely honest in his real estate or development transactions with anyone — not even the public.

That’s why Ladra has to scoff when Trump says he doesn’t expect to make a profit from the deal.

“I’d love to do it. I can’t make money with it. But I’d love to do it,” he reportedly told a reporter Friday at an even naming a villa at Trump International Doral after golf great Jack Nicklaus.

So we’re supposed to believe he’s not in it for the money? What’s he going to do with the $2.3 million in profit he said he can get the course earning by year 5, according to his own proposal? Well, it will be $2.2 million after he pays us our paltry $100,000.

Or maybe it’s that $2 mil a year is not really money to him.

He expects us to believe he just wants to pump at least $10 million into the course — before hiking rates and promoting it to out-of-state duffers — because he needs a new hobby. Or he’s doing it out of the kindness of his heart.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

But that’s almost easier to believe than the mayor’s story about staying out of the process. It is more concerning to Ladra that Gimenez has probably not been entirely honest with us, either. And, as our elected mayor, he certainly needs to be.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez’s next mancrush giveaway to Donald Trump

Gimenez said last week that he had recused himself from any conversations on the proposal in January, 2014, after a Trump representative expressed an interest in managing the course. Actually, Trump himself expressed an interest in running the course after he and the mayor played together sometime in 2013, but that doesn’t play into his narrative, so let’s move on… The mayor says he didn’t have to recuse himself but did so in an abundance of caution because his lobbyist son works for Trump on other matters, representing him in Doral and in other cities. Junior doesn’t represent Trump at the county, but how are we to know he doesn’t nudge his father over Sunday morning breakfast about it? Abundance of caution, indeed.

Problem is, Gimenez never recused himself in writing. Not until earlier this month, when the proposal — made in July — first became known to the world. We just have to take his word for it.

And that’s hard to do when emails written by county officials indicate the exact opposite. It not only looks like he talked to staff about it after January, 2014. It also looks like he wanted them to fast track it. It looks like staff was instructed to walk Trump’s people through the process to present a proposal that would be accepted.

Someone on staff even noticed that it looked that way when they reviewed the mayor’s letter to Trump and eliminated the word “acceptable” because “it presumes that there is an acceptable offer, or worse, that no matter what that offer is, Jack’s involvement will make it acceptable to us,” the hand-written notation states about Parks Director Jack Kerdys.

Bingo! That is exactly what we are presuming. We are going to presume that even without the word acceptable because that is what is going on here. Especially if you look at the tone of the other meetings.

“Mayor wants Trump letter today–see me first thing,” Kerdys wrote to Deputy Director George Navarette, who had been working on the details of the mayor’s reply to the original inquiry, which included the fact that significant master plan amendments would have to be made.

Twelve days later, Kerdys wrote another email after he saw that a question was raised about some of the language in the response to Trump — which comes from the mayor officially, and is signed by him, but is apparently written by lots of other people, including Elvira Manon, from the office of the mayor, who made some edits.

“I just saw this — I hope this is moving because he mayor will be furious if Trump calls him for lack of response… please advise.”

That doesn’t sound like Gimenez recused himself. In fact, it sounds like he was having regular update conversations with Kerdys if nobody else.

Which only leads Ladra to ask: What else are they being less than truthful about?

  Carlos Gimenez, Crandon, Donald Trump