What golf says about Trump
In a book released Tuesday in the United States, sports columnist Rick Reilly recounts that the billionaire gulf as he presides: with an obsession with winning and cheating to achieve it.
After real estate, it is his second passion: Donald Trump loves golf. Through his family empire, he owns nearly twenty sites, including twelve in the United States. Courses on which he often goes to play. Very often, according to a specialized site which keeps the count: since taking office for 114 weeks, the president would have visited 177 times in one of his clubs. Essentially those of Palm Beach (Florida), near its “Winter White House” in Mar-a-Lago, and Bedminster (New Jersey), its “Summer White House”.
This attendance on the greens, far from Washington and his real White House, earned him recurring criticism. Especially since Trump, when Barack Obama was president, relentlessly criticized the latter for spending too much time playing golf and not enough running the country. As in this tweet from 2014: "Can you believe that with all the problems and difficulties that the United States faces, President Obama has spent his day playing golf."
"If I am elected, I would work for you, I would not have time to go golfing, believe me", even promised Trump to his followers during a campaign rally in Virginia, in the summer. 2016. In eight years, Barack Obama has played there 333 times. At the current rate, Trump could exceed that number in a single term.
He cheated on Tiger Woods
Beyond this hypocrisy and legitimate concerns about the amount of time spent golfing, Donald Trump's way of playing is at the center of attention today. With the release, on Tuesday in the United States, of the new book by famous sports columnist Rick Reilly: Commander in Cheat (Editions Hachette), a pun with commander in chief that could be translated as “Cheat in chief”. “Golf is like cycling shorts: it says a lot about the man,” Reilly has often repeated. What golf reveals about Trump is overwhelming.
Former Sports Illustrated magazine and ESPN columnist, the author has known Donald Trump for over thirty years. He often rubbed shoulders with him on golf courses. The result of this personal experience, but also of a hundred interviews with professional or amateur players, employees or caddies who have seen the real estate magnate at work, his book offers a hilarious dive into golfing practices. of Trump, portrayed as a "congenital cheater."
"No matter who the opponent is, Trump must win," Reilly writes. Whether you are his pharmacist or Tiger Woods, if you play with him, he will cheat. ” Among a host of anecdotes, the author tells how, shortly after his inauguration, the tenant of the White House rigged a team game opposing him in particular to Woods, American legend of this sport. After having sent the ball twice in a row without his opponents noticing it, he would have discreetly placed a ball on the green, at the place he had tried to reach without success.
He gulfs (also) with his feet
In a game against sports journalist Mike Tirico, he allegedly kicked his opponent's ball and sent it into a bunker (sand pit). Sometimes, says Reilly, Secret Service agents quietly take it upon themselves to get Trump's ball out of trouble. When the latter does not do it himself. Some caddies would nickname him "Pelé", Brazilian football legend, for his annoying tendency to stomp balls.
Trump's sickly cheating also leads him to oversell his exploits. In a lunar interview in April 2016, the Republican candidate told the Washington Post: “My life has been marked by victories. I won a lot. When I do something, I win. Even in sport, I have always won. I have always been a good athlete. In golf, I've won lots and lots of club tournaments. ” According to his version, Donald Trump has won eighteen golf club tournaments. An assertion that specialists have never accepted, and which Rick Reilly has thoroughly investigated. His verdict: “Final score on the eighteen championships: sixteen lies, two incomplete, none confirmed. Trump's nose has grown so long that at this point he could putt with it ”.
Rules "made for others"
Corrosive, this golf story coincides with what we know about Donald Trump, the man who lies a lot, and for a long time. Whether it is on his state of health (to escape the Vietnam War), on his wealth (to appear on the list of the biggest fortunes of Forbes), on the crowd present at his inauguration (so that it is more massive than for Obama), on a non-existent attack in Sweden or on a payment intended to buy the silence of an alleged former mistress.
"The way Trump gulf matches the way he presides, pretending the rules are made for others," says Rick Reilly. Facts and truths are to him like his golf scorecards and the size of crowds: "impressions", malleable and negotiable ". Since taking office, the Washington Post has documented Trump's “false or misleading claims”. As of March 31, the counter read 9,451 in 801 days. That is almost twelve lies a day. On subjects often much more serious than an eighteen hole course in Florida.
