Pro golfer Bernhard Langer released a statement Thursday disputing an anecdote used by President Donald Trump earlier this week during a talk with congressional leaders.
Trump spoke Monday of an anecdote that he attributed to Langer, described by the president as a “friend,” according to The New York Times. In the president’s telling, Langer said he had been turned away at the polls in Florida while others who didn’t look as if they should be allowed to vote were allowed to cast provisional ballots. Trump did not describe what the people who “shouldn’t be able to vote” looked like, but he mentioned some Latin American countries.
Langer, a German citizen, said in a statement issued Thursday through the PGA Tour Champions that neither was he the subject of that anecdote nor had he told it to the president.
“Unfortunately, the report in the New York Times and other news outlets was a mischaracterization by the media,” Langer said. “The voting situation reported was not conveyed from me to President Trump, but rather was told to me by a friend. I then relayed the story in conversation with another friend, who shared it with a person with ties to the White House. From there, this was misconstrued. I am not a citizen of the United States, and cannot vote.”
An unnamed White House staff member told the Times, however, that he was with Trump in November when Langer told Trump the story about his friend in Florida, and that the president apparently got it confused.
Langer owns a home in Florida and is not eligible to vote in the U.S. His daughter also told The Times that he is “not a friend of President Trump’s.”
Trump has claimed repeatedly that as many as 5 million people voted illegally, robbing him of a popular-vote victory in the presidential election.
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