Reaction to Trump’s comments about Arnold Palmer

By MEG KINNARD

One of the daughters of late golf legend Arnold Palmer is calling Donald Trump’s references to her father’s genitalia “a poor choice of approach” to honoring his memory, adding that she is not bothered by the comments.

“There is nothing to say. I’m not really upset,” Peg Palmer Wears, 68, told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday. “I think it was a poor choice of approaches to remember my father, but what are you going to do?”

On Saturday in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the town where Palmer was born in 1929 and learned to play golf from his father, Trump kicked off his rally in the final weeks of the campaign with a detailed 12-minute story about Palmer that included a anecdote about what Palmer did. it looked like the showers.

“When he showered with other professionals, they left there. They said, ‘Oh my God. That’s incredible,” Trump said with a laugh. “I had to say that. We have very sophisticated women here, but they used to see Arnold as a man.”

Wears said he had only had past encounters with Trump at functions decades ago, but that his father and the GOP presidential nominee, an avid golfer who owns courses around the world, shared a kinship primarily because of “the ‘interest in golf and love of golf’. .”

Emotional at times as she recalled conversations with her father, who died in 2016 at age 87, Wears said her father “believed in the Republican Party.”

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about what my dad would say about something or what’s going on,” Wears said. “We didn’t always agree on things, but he was a quintessential American who believed fervently in this country, even when he questioned its leadership.”

Asked three times Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” what he thought of Trump’s comments, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declined to answer.

“I’ll address it, let me answer it,” Johnson said, never answering the question. “Don’t say that again. We don’t have to say it. I understand.”

Gov. Chris Sununu, RN.H., told ABC’s “This Week” that he didn’t like Trump’s comments, including one in which he used a profanity to refer to Vice President Kamala Harris, but that the comments of the former president do not influence. voters one way or another.

“I mean it’s just par for the course. He’s talking in hyperbole. He gets his crowd fired up,” Sununu said.