President Donald Trump called Bernhard Langer last week to “apologize” for involving the two-time Masters champ in a recent story surrounding potential voter fraud.
“We talked on the phone, and he was very clear ... if there was anything that hurt me, he apologized,” Langer told reporters Thursday at the Allianz Championship. “It was fun talking to him briefly, and I thought that’s a great gesture from him because he’s got a lot of other things to be concerned about, not just, you know, this golfer Bernhard Langer.”
Langer’s name was splashed in headlines last month when a New York Times report indicated Langer relayed a story to Trump about witnessing possible fraud while in line to vote during the general election in November.
Langer is a German citizen, and as a permanent resident living in Florida he is not eligible to vote in U.S. elections. He later released a statement explaining that the president didn’t hear the story directly from his mouth.
“I didn’t say anything to the president,” Langer told TCPalm.com. “We never talked. I told a story to a friend, and the friend told the story to another friend, and another friend and another friend. Somewhere down the line, six people later, somebody knew somebody at the White House and that’s how it went, OK?”
Langer is teeing it up this week near his home in Boca Raton, Fla., in what will be his first PGA Tour Champions start since winning the season-opening Mitsubishi Electric Championship. He’s ready to return the focus to his on-course performance, but also believes his daughter, Christina, was mis-quoted in the original report when stating that her father is “not a friend of Mr. Trump.”
“I was very disappointed with the article, the way it was written and what happened,” he said. “It’s not the first time, and it may not be the last time because it’s out of my control.”