Peg Palmer Wears, one of Arnold Palmer’s daughters, responded to former President Donald Trump‘s comments about her father that he made Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump opened his rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where the late golf legend was born and grew up, with a 10-minute ramble about Palmer’s life that culminated in a comment that he was “all man” followed by what many understood as a reference to genitalia.
“When he took the showers with other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable,'” Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, said. “I had to say it. We have women that are highly sophisticated here, but they used to look at Arnold as a man.”
The comment immediately blew up on social media, leading to confusion and criticism of the former president for making the crude remarks.
Wears responded to the remarks during an interview with the Associated Press on Sunday, saying that “there’s nothing much to say.”
“I’m not really upset,” she added. “I think it was a poor choice of approaches to remembering my father, but what are you going to do?”
Wears stressed that she only had passing encounters with Trump and that her father and the former president only shared “an interest in golf and a love of golf.”
She also said that her father “believed in the Republican Party” and that she often thinks “about what my father would say about something or what’s happened…he was a quintessential American who believed fervently in this country, even when he questioned its direction.”
Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Newsweek in an email Sunday morning that “the legendary Arnold Palmer represented the best of America, but these days under the Kamala-Biden administration, this country is much weaker and soft because of their failed policies.”
Newsweek has reached out by email for comment from the Trump campaign regarding Wears’ remark.
Kim Stepinsky/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review via AP, File
Wears previously told author Thomas Hauser that her father was otherwise “appalled” by Trump’s “lack of civility and…lack of character.”
“One moment stands out in my mind,” Wears previously said during an interview with Sporting News. “My dad and I were at home in Latrobe. He died in September, so this was before the election. The television was on. Trump was talking, and my dad made a sound of disgust…like he couldn’t believe the arrogance and crudeness of this man who was the nominee of the political party that he believed in.”
She added: “Then he said, ‘He’s not as smart as we thought he was’ and walked out of the room. What would my dad think of Donald Trump today? I think he’d cringe.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, refused to directly address Trump’s remarks during CNN‘s State of the Union on Sunday.
“Is this really the closing message you want voters to hear from Donald Trump? Stories about Arnold Palmer’s penis?” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked.
Johnson tried to pivot to discussing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, but Tapper continued pressing for a response, leading Johnson to say, “I get it,” and then remarked about Trump’s ability to “fill the room” and “speak for two hours straight” in comparison to President Joe Biden who is no longer running for president.
“He has fun at the rallies, he says things that are off the cuff. But I’m telling you I’ve been in those events, I’ve been in those arenas, and people have a great time at those arenas,” he said. “You can cherry-pick a few words or lines out of a two-hour event, we could do that with Kamala Harris after a 20-minute event because she does word salads and she couldn’t hold court like that without a teleprompter.”
