|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:01:51 GMT
Trump Golf Counttrumpgolfcount.com/UPDATED AMOUNT 07/19: Cost to Taxpayer: About $143,000,000**
Trump Golf Count: 293*
*Daytime visits to golf clubs since inauguration, with evidence of playing golf on at least 148 visits. Our last recorded outing was on December 13, 2020. Click on complete data table for a list of Trump's outings, or view our breakdown of total costs.
trumpgolfcount.com/displayoutings trumpgolfcount.com/#costModal
**Read about the new GAO report on the cost of Trump's trips to Mar-a-Lago: trumpgolfcount.com/displaygaoreportcomment
trumpgolfcount.com/
Fun Stats
Days Trump has spent at Mar a Lago:
69
Cost of flights to Mar a Lago (17 so far):*
~$34,181,000
Days Trump has spent at Bedminster:
33
Cost of flights to Bedminster (11 so far):*
~$8,481,000
Trump has visited his clubs once every this many days since his inauguration:
4.5
Projected visits to golf clubs in four years:
325
Projected visits in eight years:
650
Total times Obama played golf during his eight year Presidency:
306
*Cost estimates for Trump's travel to Mar a Lago and Bedminster are from The Washington Post. At this point the number of flights to Bedminster is one more than common counts of his "visits" because of an extra round trip on Air Force One to return to the White House for six hours during the weekend of July 4, 2017. See trumpgolfcount.com/displayoutings for up-to-the-minute details about golf outings and trumpgolfcount.com/displayflights for a list of Trump's flights to Florida and New Jersey.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:02:17 GMT
Pro golfers say President Trump 'cheats at the highest level' in new bookYahoo Sports Ben Weinrib,Yahoo Sports 16 hours ago www.yahoo.com/sports/golfers-say-president-trump-cheats-at-the-highest-level-142857151.html
Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with Tiger Woods during a ribbon cutting for the new Tiger Woods Villa at the Trump National Doral golf course, Wednesday, March 5, 2014 in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee) President Donald Trump has played with some of the world's best golfers and has regularly been accused of blatantly cheating. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
President Donald Trump is certainly known to bend the truth. The Washington Post has counted nearly a dozen false or misleading claims per day of his presidency, while Politifact scored 70 percent of his statements as Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire.
As it turns out, that propensity to lie also carries over to his longtime love of golf.
There’s already been the story of Trump naming himself the winner of a tournament he never played in, but former Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly spells out the extent of the lying and cheating in his new book, “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump,” which will be available on Tuesday.
“To say ‘Donald Trump cheats’ is like saying ‘Michael Phelps swims,'” Reilly writes. “He cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching and he cheats when they aren’t. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that’s how he plays golf … if you’re playing golf with him, he’s going to cheat.”
Mulligans and tampering with balls Trump’s most blatant cheating reportedly comes in the form of not playing his shots — or others’ — where they actually land.
When Trump played golf with Tiger Woods, world No. 1 Dustin Johnson and PGA Tour veteran Brad Faxon in February, Trump hit a ball into the lake. But when the other players weren't looking, he got out another ball and hit another try, although that too went into the lake.
“So he drives up,” Faxon said, “and drops where he should’ve dropped the first time and hits it on the green.”
The cheating is not just to impress pro golfers. Reilly also details stories with ESPN announcer Mike Tirico, LPGA pro Suzann Pettersen and actor Samuel L. Jackson. In one of the most egregious stories, Tirico remembers hitting one of the best shots of his life squarely onto the green, but when he walked over, the ball was 50 feet away in a bunker.
“Trump’s caddy came up to me and said, ‘You know that shot you hit on the par 5?’” Tirico says. “‘It was about 10 feet from the hole. Trump threw it in the bunker. I watched him do it.’”
Lying is par for the course for Trump
One of the strangest things about Trump’s history of lying while golfing is that he’s reportedly a very respectable golfer. However, he habitually lies about how good he is, including his self-reported 2.8 handicap, which is less than a stroke away from PGA legend and frequent golfing partner Jack Nicklaus.
Even his courses contain lies, from his Trump National Golf Club wrongly claiming that a Civil War battle took place on site to his Bedminster course falsely attributing praise from famed golf architect Tom Fazio.
Still, none of this is particularly shocking to anyone who has followed Trump. After he repeatedly admonished former President Obama for golfing and said that he would have no time to play himself, Trump has played a round every 4.2 days — twice Obama’s rate. And, naturally, he tends to lie and cover up how often he plays while on the job.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:02:41 GMT
This is pathetically obscene to be costing the taxpayers so much money. (95 MILLION SO FAR) This deplorable has no conscience and is great at spending taxpayers money and redistributing middleclass wealth to the richest among us. Shameful.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:03:05 GMT
Sportswriter: Trump cheats like a mafia accountant at golf
CNN Published on Apr 2, 2019 In an interview with CNN’s John Berman, longtime sportswriter and author of "Commander in Cheat" Rick Reilly details how President Donald Trump allegedly cheats his opponents at golf. #CNN #News
This scene was written based on a game of golf the writer had with Donald J. Trump
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:03:27 GMT
Trump TRIGGERED By Reports That He Cheats At Golf
TYT Sports Published on Apr 2, 2019 Trump cheats at golf? Rick Strom breaks it down.
Trump's Golf Game Gets TROLLED In EPIC Way
TYT Sports Published on Apr 10, 2019 Trump has many sneaky tactics he uses to cheat at golf. Rick Strom breaks it down.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:03:53 GMT
Trump’s golf habit costing taxpayers $102 million and countingYahoo News Video 1 hour 43 minutes ago www.yahoo.com/news/trump-golf-habit-costing-taxpayers-182108823.html President Trump’s love of golf has already cost taxpayers at least $102 million in extra travel and security expenses.
President Donald Trump's golf outings have already cost U.S. taxpayers at least $102 million, according to an analysis from the HuffPost.
The $102 million paid by Americans to cover security and travel expenses on the golf trips during Trump's almost two and half years in office was about $12.7 million less than what Barack Obama and his family spent on travel during Obama's eight years in the White House, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog that relies on open records laws.
HuffPost said it "took a conservative approach to determining costs" of Trump's travel. It calculated Air Force One operating costs at $15,994 per-hour—the price of fuel and maintenance—although Pentagon documents received by Judicial Watch showed that each flight-hour cost $180,118 in fiscal year 2016 and $206,337 in fiscal year 2015.
GettyImages-999293088 President Donald Trump plays a round of golf at Trump Turnberry Luxury Collection Resort during his first official visit to the United Kingdom on July 15, 2018, in Turnberry, Scotland. LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES
The amount of money spent by Trump on golf since taking office highlights the disconnect between his campaign statements and his conduct while president. On the campaign trail during the 2016 election, Trump criticized Obama for golfing. In 2016, he tweeted "While our wonderful president was out playing golf all day, the TSA is falling apart, just like our government! Airports a total disaster!"
His campaign comments about Obama's golf habit continued the criticism he lobbed as a private citizen, when he tweeted frequently about Obama's golfing.
RELATED STORIES Trump Described as Serial Golf Cheater in New Book Kid Rock and 'Down to Earth' Trump Play Golf Trump Hit Head With Golf Club, Asked Caddy if He Did It Trump's own golf outings have been a regular target since his term began. The president has golfed with renowned conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, Bret Baier and Sean Hannity since taking office. He has also hit the links with Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, and Senators Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham.
Last month, NBC News reported that Trump had spent 252 days at his properties, such as Mar-a-Lago and Trump International Hotel, and 187 days at golf properties, such as Trump National Bedminster, in New Jersey.
The cost of Trump's travel has exacerbated ethics breaches within his administration. A number of Trump administration figures have drawn backlash for their travel habits. Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt spent $124,000 of taxpayer money on first- and business-class travel while leading the agency, according to the agency's inspector general. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also violated agency travel policy by having his wife travel in government vehicles.
comments:
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:04:15 GMT
DONALD TRUMP ANGRILY SLAMMED GOLF CLUB INTO BAG, HIT HIS HEAD AND ASKED IF HIS CADDY DID IT: REPORTBY TIM MARCIN ON 3/21/19 AT 11:05 AM EDT www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-golf-club-hit-head-blamed-caddie-1370835 DONALD TRUMP blob:https://www.newsweek.com/83aa2e9c-e779-4399-88ac-5022ebc82eeb
It's not uncommon for golfers to forcefully shove a club into a bag in anger—for the average player, golf is a game of frustration with fleeting moments of excellence. It seems President Donald Trump is no exception to that.
On Thursday, Politico published an excerpt from Commander-in-Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, a forthcoming book from sportswriter Rick Reilly. The title explores Trump's relationship with golf—as well as his relationships with his current caddy—identified as A.J—and his former-caddy-turned-staffer Dan Scavino. One brief passage details a funny exchange that came as a result of Trump's anger at a wayward drive.
Reilly wrote in the Politico excerpt:
"One time, after a bad drive, Trump slammed his driver back in his bag, as guys will do, and wasn’t really watching what he was doing, and the driver ricocheted back and hit Trump in the head. 'A.J.?'Trump asked, pissed. 'Did you just hit me in the head with my own driver?'
'Sir, Mr. Trump, why would I do that?' A.J. said. 'You’re my president!'
The excerpt from Commander-in-Cheat looks at A.J.—described as "a 60-something ex-Marine"—bending over backward to praise Trump as they loop around one of his home courses, Trump National Golf Club Washington. Trump is, of course, an avid golfer whose company owns more than a dozen courses, including elite courses like Trump Turnberry in Scotland and Trump National Doral in Florida.
RELATED STORIES Trump Tying 'Personal Business Interests' to Diplomacy Trump Slammed by Former Ethics Head Over Golf Tweet donald, trump, emoluments, clause, golf
President Donald Trump drives a golf buggy on his golf course at the Trump Turnberry resort in South Ayrshire, Scotland. While he used to criticize President Barack Obama for golfing, Trump been a frequent golfer during his time as commander in chief. ANDREW MILLIGAN/GETTY IMAGES
While he used to criticize President Barack Obama for golfing—and even claimed he wouldn't have time to hit the links if he made it into the White House—Trump been a frequent golfer during his time as commander in chief. Through two years in office, he visited a golf course in the daytime more than 150 times and was documented golfing on at least 70 occasions.
The president even reportedly paid to have a swanky simulator installed in the White House. Citing a White House official, The Washington Post reported in February that Trump shelled out $50,000 to have a top-of-the-line simulator put into the White House.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:04:37 GMT
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:05:19 GMT
And that's just his golf costs to taxpayers. Try adding in travel costs, added security costs, extensive vacation costs to Florida and you can quadruple his golf cost amounts.Trump’s Golf Costs: $102 Million And Counting, With Taxpayers Picking Up The TabHuffPost S.V. Date,HuffPost Wed, May 22 2:45 AM MST www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/trump-golf-102-million-taxpayers-094500724.html
Donald Trump’s golf habit has already cost taxpayers at least $102 million in extra travel and security expenses, and next month will achieve a new milestone: a seven-figure presidential visit to another country so he can play at his own course.
U.S. taxpayers have spent $81 million for the president’s two dozen trips to Florida, according to a HuffPost analysis. They spent $17 million for his 15 trips to New Jersey, another $1 million so he could visit his resort in Los Angeles and at least $3 million for his two days in Scotland last summer ― $1.3 million of which went just for rental cars for the massive entourage that accompanies a president abroad.
And, notwithstanding Trump’s campaign promise that if elected he would not play golf at all, the White House has done preliminary work for Trump’s visit to his resort on the west coast of Ireland next month, according to Irish media and government sources, even though no official meeting with Irish leaders is planned in the capital, Dublin.
(Photo: Andrew Milligan - PA Images via Getty Images) Late Tuesday afternoon, the White House announced that Trump would meet with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Shannon, just 30 miles by air from Trump’s golf resort in Doonbeg. It will be the first time Trump will visit a foreign country — with the staggering footprint of personnel and equipment that entails — for the main purpose of playing golf, though an official purpose was layered on after the fact.
“It’s obviously an incredible waste of money,” said Robert Weissman, president of the group Public Citizen. He then quipped: “Of course, the more time he spends golfing, the less time he spends governing, the better.”
The $102 million total to date spent on Trump’s presidential golfing represents 255 times the annual presidential salary he volunteered not to take. It is more than three times the cost of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that Trump continually complains about. It would fund for six years the Special Olympics program that Trump’s proposed budget had originally cut to save money.
While Republicans and Trump himself frequently criticized former President Barack Obama for his golf outings, Trump has spent more than twice as many days on the links, to date, as Obama did at the same point in his first term. And because Trump has insisted on dozens of trips to New Jersey and Florida to play at his resorts there, taxpayers are spending more than three times as much as they did for golf by the same point in Obama’s term.
The White House did not respond to numerous queries regarding this story. North Carolina Republican congressman Mark Meadows, a close Trump ally, dismissed the $102 million figure as insignificant.
“There’s a lot more important things to worry about than the rounding errors that we sometimes have on these things,” he said Tuesday.
Just as troubling as the amount Trump has spent so far on golf trips is the fact that his visits have been to his own properties — for-profit businesses that put money in his own pocket and that Trump routinely praises during his visits.
During his trip to Scotland last year, for example, Trump wrote: “I have arrived in Scotland and will be at Trump Turnberry for two days of meetings, calls and hopefully, some golf - my primary form of exercise! The weather is beautiful, and this place is incredible!”
“His top priority with these trips is not the business of the American people, it’s the business of the Trump Organization,” said Jordan Libowitz of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “The American presidency has become another tool to advertise his golf properties.”
The vast majority of Trump’s golf costs result from his insistence on playing at his Florida courses in West Palm Beach and Jupiter, where he has spent 61 days while staying at his resort in the nearby town of Palm Beach. A weekend trip to Mar-a-Lago averages $3.4 million, with most of that resulting from the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs each hour to fly both the modified Boeing 747 that serves as the primary Air Force One, as well as the C-17 cargo planes required to move all the support vehicles in Trump’s motorcade.
Determining the cost of Trump’s golf visits is not easy. The White House is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and Trump’s press office does not answer most questions about his golf visits — even refusing to confirm whether he is, in fact, playing golf when he is physically at his golf courses.
But a recent Government Accountability Office report regarding Trump’s four early 2017 visits to Mar-a-Lago has provided hard data and a methodology that HuffPost followed in its own analysis.
The HuffPost analysis took a conservative approach to determining costs. For example, it used a per-hour rate of $15,994 for Trump’s use of the smaller Air Force One that he takes to Bedminster, New Jersey, even though that figure accounts only for fuel and maintenance, not the additional factors that GAO used when it determined the $273,000-per-hour cost of operating the larger plane.
(Photo: Ivylise Simones/HuffPost)
Any presidential outing requires coordination of multiple offices and agencies and incurs additional costs compared to staying in the White House. Even one of Trump’s day trips to his course across the Potomac River in northern Virginia — there have been 52 to date — requires fuel for all the motorcade vehicles and some personnel costs if overtime is necessary for Secret Service agents and others. (Those expenses, however, are minimal compared to flight costs, and HuffPost did not include them in its $102 million total.)
And the price increases exponentially the farther Trump travels.
Flying the Marine Corps helicopters — three of them are used each time ― from the White House to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where Air Force One is based, costs $57,000 for the round trip, according to the GAO report. Flying the massive C-17 transports loaded with Trump’s 7-ton armored limousines and other specialized support vehicles costs $800,500 per Mar-a-Lago trip.
And for each of those trips, the Coast Guard winds up spending an extra $855,500 to patrol the Atlantic Ocean to the east of Mar-a-Lago and the Intracoastal Waterway to the west. That figure includes the expense of getting necessary ships, boats and crews to South Florida from stations as far away as Boston and Houston, the GAO reported.
When Trump travels overseas, the costs rise even higher, as yet more agencies become involved. Dozens of White House staff members may travel with Trump during a weekend to Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster, but that number swells to several hundred on an overseas trip. The administration avoids lengthy motorcades on foreign soil, so Marine helicopters and V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft must be pre-positioned. A backup Air Force One is sent along as the support plane.
According to a Scottish newspaper last summer, the U.S. State Department paid a local car rental agency $1.2 million for vehicles for all the staff who relocated from London, where Trump had met with Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Theresa May, to Scotland, where Trump wanted to play golf at his Turnberry resort before heading to Finland to meet Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Between that expense and the costs of moving equipment from London to Glasgow and then 55 miles southwest to Turnberry, those two golf days cost taxpayers at least $3 million beyond what they would have spent if Trump had simply stayed in London, according to HuffPost’s analysis.
One of Trump’s favorite lines of attack against Obama was to point out his frequent golf outings during his presidency.
“I play golf to relax. My company is in great shape. @barackobama plays golf to escape work while America goes down the drain,” Trump tweeted in December 2011.
“Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf. Worse than Carter,” he wrote three years later.
As he began his own run for the White House, candidate Trump repeatedly promised that golf would never make it onto a President Trump schedule. “I love golf, but if I were in the White House, I don’t think I’d ever see Turnberry again. I don’t think I’d ever see Doral again,” he told a rally audience in February 2016, referring to his course near the Miami airport. “I don’t ever think I’d see anything. I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off.”
Trump reneged on that pledge within two weeks, when he took his first of 24 trips to date to Mar-a-Lago. He has, according to HuffPost’s analysis, spent a total of 61 days on his Florida courses, 58 at Bedminster in New Jersey, one at Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles and two at Trump Turnberry.
Wednesday is the 853rd day of his presidency, and Trump has spent 174 of them at one of his own golf courses. He spent one additional day golfing: Nov. 5, 2017, at the Kasumigaseki Country Club outside Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. It is the only time thus far that he has played golf at a course he does not own.
That insistence of frequenting his own properties, in fact, has driven his total golf expenses disproportionately higher than Obama’s at the same point in his presidency.
By Obama’s 853rd day in office, he had spent 70 days at a golf course. But 48 of those golf days were at courses on military bases: Joint Base Andrews or Fort Belvoir, both in suburban Washington a short motorcade ride from the White House. All but two of the others were on family vacations to Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard.
And although Hawaii is four times as far from Washington, D.C., as Palm Beach, Obama only went there twice in his first 28 months. In that same time span, Trump has gone to Mar-a-Lago 24 times. While Obama made two trips to Martha’s Vineyard through May of 2011, Trump has already gone to Bedminster 15 times.
The result: Obama racked up out-of-town golf expenses of approximately $30 million compared to Trump’s $102 million.
And Trump’s tab will grow by several million dollars more if he follows through with a golf outing at his resort at Doonbeg, Ireland, before or after his coming trip to London and Normandy in early June. An Ireland stop means travel on Air Force One, C-17s to ferry vehicles and helicopters as well as hundreds of White House, Pentagon and State Department staff that make up the entourage of a foreign visit.
Cognizant of how a foreign visit solely for a golf vacation might look, the White House tried to arrange some type of official meeting with Irish leaders for weeks after it began planning the Doonbeg trip.
But Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s government, cognizant of Trump’s deep unpopularity in Ireland, was reluctant to agree to the White House request that Varadkar travel to Trump’s private resort on the opposite side of the country from Dublin, said an Irish government source who spoke on condition of anonymity. Tuesday’s announcement of a meeting in Shannon, possibly at Shannon airport — where Air Force One will land — appears to be the compromise location.
“We welcome the announcement of the visit by the U.S. president,” the Irish Embassy said in a statement Tuesday. “Detailed arrangements around the visit will be made public in due course.”
The White House press staff, meanwhile, did not respond to repeated queries about various aspects of this report over a period of weeks.
It is the same strategy that Trump has used throughout his two and a half years in office when it comes to his golfing. While the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama White Houses usually released the names of the president’s golf partners after any given outing, the Trump White House has almost always refused to confirm that Trump even golfed — including on occasions when he has shown up wearing a golf shirt, trousers and ball cap. (The only exceptions have been when Trump has played with a famous person or a member of Congress.)
On March 3, 2018, HuffPost filed a White House pool report from Mar-a-Lago stating: “Pool did ask the White House what the president was doing at his golf course and with whom he was doing it but received no reply.”
This past Sunday, four hours after arriving at Trump’s golf course in Sterling, Virginia, the Washington Blade reporter serving as pool wrote: “No word from the White House on POTUS’ golf partners, nor even confirmation POTUS was, in fact, golfing.”
On some golf days, Trump or his White House have claimed — dubiously — that he is involved in “meetings,” when, in fact, social media posts later show he had been out on the course.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Republican supporters who, like Trump, spent years attacking Obama for his golf outings have suddenly gone silent.
During Obama’s second term, Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso asked the GAO to look at a trip he took that combined a speech in Illinois with a golf weekend in Palm Beach. When the GAO released a report in 2016, Barrasso said in a statement: “President Obama had such little disregard for the taxpayer that he spent millions of dollars to play golf with Tiger Woods. This arrogance is par for the course for the Obama administration.”
Asked about Trump’s far higher golf spending, Barrasso told HuffPost Tuesday: “I haven’t followed that at all.”
Michael Steel, once a top aide to former Republican House Speaker John Boehner, acknowledged that Republicans’ views on presidential golf may not be consistent in recent years. “There’s no question that people’s concerns and criticisms often come with a partisan lens,” he said. “At the same time, I don’t think anyone prefers the president be watching television and tweeting than playing golf ... I think it’s healthy for people to relax.”
More troubling to watchdog groups than Trump’s hypocrisy, though, is the self-dealing that occurs whenever Trump travels to his own resorts. On top of the publicity value of a presidential visit, each trip also results in many thousands of taxpayer dollars flowing to Trump resorts for hotel rooms, golf carts and food and drink for Secret Service agents.
Because Trump continues to profit from these businesses — despite a promise he made during the campaign that he would not — a portion of that taxpayer money ends up in Trump’s own pocket. The GAO report found that Mar-a-Lago received approximately $60,000 in just the four visits it studied.
“As Trump promotes his golf courses through taxpayer-financed visits to his clubs, it’s an extra benefit for him that his properties are able to scoop up some taxpayer money directly,” said Public Citizen’s Weissman.
“It’s clear that to Donald Trump, the presidency is just another way to benefit his businesses,” CREW’s Libowitz added. “Because of his refusal to divest from his business empire, Americans must always ask whether his decisions are made primarily with his bank account in mind.”
Igor Bobic and Arthur Delaney contributed reporting.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:06:20 GMT
Trump’s Ireland Golf Course Visit Cost Taxpayers $3.6 MillionRolling Stone Peter Wade,Rolling Stone 10 hours ago www.yahoo.com/entertainment/trump-ireland-golf-course-visit-224536672.html
Trump, Mobara, Japan - 26 May 2019
The president is rarely in a building, save for the White House, that doesn’t have his name on it. And that is costing the American taxpayer more than $100 million, according to HuffPost. Trump’s recent visit to his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, contributed $3.6 million to that total.
The expenses for Trump’s trip included $1,023,940 for car and limo rentals, $10,866 to install temporary phone lines and an astounding $16,325 for the Secret Service to rent golf carts to follow the president while he played the links. And according to HuffPost, the jaunt to Ireland cost the State Department $1.5 million in contracts for the trip.
Related stories Trump Backs Off Tariff Threat After Reaching Deal With Mexico www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-tariffs-mexico-deal-845969/ Mob Boss James 'Whitey' Bulger Was a Trump Supporter, Prison Letters Show www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/whitey-bulger-trump-supporter-845974/
And the resort tried to cash in even more on its presidential owner by posting videos on Facebook of him golfing there and of his helicopter arrival. But, HuffPost says, the videos were taken down after they made inquiries. As were two tweets promoting the president’s visit. The posts were a violation of the pledge the Trump Organization made at the beginning of his term, promising that “no communications of the Organization, including social media accounts, will reference or otherwise be tied to President-Elect Trump’s role as President of the United States or the Office of the Presidency.”
Trump told reporters as he left the White House last week that he was staying at his resort at Doonbeg for convenience, saying, “Well, we’re going to be staying at Doonbeg, in Ireland because it’s convenient and it’s a great place. But it’s convenient.”
As HuffPost points out, however, going to Doonbeg required quite a detour, and it would have made more sense for Trump to stay overnight in France after visiting Normandy, rather than flying to Ireland.
Jordan Libowitz of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is suing the administration for violating the “emoluments clause” of the Constitution told HuffPost, “At this point, it appears that Donald Trump views his presidency as just another way to support his business,” Libowitz said. “On an international trip at taxpayer expense, he stopped by to film a commercial for his Irish golf course, which is advertising the stop explicitly as one by the president of the United States. His own lawyers, in their ‘Conflict of Interest’ white paper, said this would not happen. But at this point, it’s clear all that matters to President Trump is what makes him money.”
The trip was Trump’s 181st overnight stay at a golf course during his presidency, and most of those stays—all but two—were at Trump-owned properties. Trump returned to the White House from his European trip on Friday night. On Saturday, he was back at another one of his properties: Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:06:45 GMT
Well at least the seal is accurate now as trump sure does love Russia and to waste taxpayers dollars lining his own pocket golfing almost every weekend.Trump speaks in front of fake presidential seal mysteriously manipulated to feature Russian eagles and golf clubsThe Independent Adam Forrest,The Independent 2 hours 59 minutes ago www.yahoo.com/news/trump-speaks-front-fake-presidential-091123040.html
Donald Trump appeared at a right-wing rally in front of a fake presidential seal, doctored to make apparently satiric references to Russia and golf.
The tweaked image flashed up on a screen behind the president as he spoke to a summit hosted by the conservative group Turning Point USA in Washington earlier this week.
The normally solitary bald eagle was seen with two heads, made to resemble the two-headed bird on the official Russian coat of arms in a mocking nod to Mr Trump’s woes with investigations into Moscow’s election meddling.
The symbolic bird also showed up clutching a bag of golf clubs – evidently a joke about the president’s fondness for spending so much time on the links.
Both the White House and Turning Point USA said they were unaware of why or how the altered image appeared on the screen.
A spokesman for Turning Point USA told The Washington Post it was a “last-minute A/V [audio/visual] mistake” after the newspaper first highlighted the doctored seal.
“I can’t figure out who did it yet. I don’t know where they got the image from,” he added, explaining they organisation was still try to determine who was responsible and where they got the image from.
Richard Painter, who served as the George W Bush administration’s chief White House ethics lawyer, told the Post: “To let someone project something on the screen that isn’t controlled by the White House is pretty stupid.”
He added: “Someone is going to be getting in trouble, but they got one heck of a good laugh out of it.”
Mr Painter explained that First Amendment freedom of expression rights allowed people to parody the official presidential seal.
Kathleen Clark, legal professor at Washington University, said: “Was someone at Turning Point trolling Trump? I just think Putin would probably approve.”
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:07:07 GMT
DONALD TRUMP GOLF COMPILATION FAILS FUNNY CHEAT
Matthew Gorman Published on Dec 13, 2017
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:07:33 GMT
Donald Trump vs. Barack Obama: Vacation and Golf Days Compared After Trump Criticized ObamaBy Faith Baquirquir, Christian Post Contributor CP CURRENT PAGE: U.S. | SATURDAY, AUGUST 05, 2017 www.christianpost.com/trends/donald-trump-vs-barack-obama-vacation-and-golf-days-compared-after-trump-criticized-obama.html
Featured in the image are U.S. President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama. | Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
U.S. President Donald Trump is about to go on a golf vacation, despite having criticized former President Barack Obama in the past for taking some time off to play golf.
Back in August of 2011, Trump, who was not yet a politician, posted a tweet criticizing Obama for playing golf. In October of 2014, he was noted to have done it again, slamming the then-current President for spending a day playing golf despite all of the problems the U.S. was facing.
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realdonaldtrump @barackobama played golf yesterday. Now he heads to a 10 day vacation in Martha's Vineyard. Nice work ethic.
911 10:36 AM - Aug 15, 2011 Twitter Ads info and privacy 2,193 people are talking about this
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realdonaldtrump Can you believe that,with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.Worse than Carter
10.9K 5:03 PM - Oct 13, 2014 Twitter Ads info and privacy 18.1K people are talking about this These were reportedly only two of the many tweets he sent about Obama's golf days in the past.
During his campaign period, Trump was adamant that when he becomes President of the United States, he would rarely leave the White House to take vacations and play golf as he told CNBC that there was "just so much to be done."
However, it looks like the Republican is taking his words back now as reports have surfaced that he is heading to his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey for a 17-day golf trip, which is almost twice as long as the vacation that Obama took during his first year as President.
The current President also had several other vacations this year, including trips to his Palm Beach, Virginia and New Jersey properties. Since his inauguration, he has been to several expensive weekend getaways to his private club in Florida and is already about to surpass the Obama's travel spending in his entire eight-year presidency.
Trump reportedly even spent a weekend at Camp David, the U.S. President's country retreat, last June.
According to The Washington Post's count, after Trump's upcoming golf trip, he will have spent about 53 days of vacation while in office and have played more than 33 rounds of golf, which is twice as many as Obama's 17 rounds.
The current U.S. President has yet to comment on the issue.
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:08:00 GMT
The sweetest thing about this is that it was at a young haters republican event Turning Point USA so maybe there is hope after all!!!www.yahoo.com/news/trump-appears-front-altered-presidential-120156551.htmlWASHINGTON – Speaking on Tuesday at a student activist conference hosted by the conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA, President Donald Trump walked onstage in front of a presidential seal that, upon closer examination, appears to have been altered to include symbols representing Russia and golf.
The Washington Post first reported on the altered seal. As Trump walked onstage to a cheering audience, two presidential seals flashed on screen. The seal directly behind Trump was the authentic presidential seal. One of the seals, however, was not like the others.
Upon closer examination, the seal on Trump's right includes a double-headed eagle, unlike the single head of the traditional presidential seal, and seems to resemble the Russian coat of arms. The seal has a complex history, notes the Victoria and Albert Museum, but one of the more common interpretations is that the two heads represent east and west, "an allegory sometimes for unity, and sometimes for absolute monarchy." It could be a reference to Trump's sometimes-controversial relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
More: Donald Trump, congressional Democrats reach two-year budget deal, avoid crisis on debt ceiling
More: President Trump vetoes bills that would have blocked Saudi weapons deal
More: 'It is not a witch hunt.' Robert Mueller testifies on Trump and Russian election meddling in 2016
The eagle also appears to be holding several golf clubs instead of arrows in its claws, perhaps a reference to Trump's affinity for golf.
Additionally, instead of "e pluribus unum," the scroll above the eagle appears to say "45 es un titere," which appears to translate from Spanish to mean "45 is a puppet."
It is not clear where the image originated, though, or who was responsible for the mixup.
President Donald Trump takes the stage at Turning Point USA Teen Student Action Summit at the Marriott Marquis in Washington on Tuesday.
“It was a last-minute A/V mistake — and I can’t figure out where the breakdown was — but it was a last minute throw-up, and that’s all it was,” a Turning Point USA spokesman told the Washington Post, adding that he didn't know who was to blame or where the image was from.
Turning Point USA and the White House have not yet responded to requests for comment from USA TODAY.
On Wednesday, Trump tweeted a video of his appearance at the event that included a shot of the seal.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump appears with altered presidential seal at Turning Point USA event[/font]
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Mar 21, 2020 7:08:39 GMT
Not only is tRump on pace to exceed Obama's 8 year total (306 rounds played) in about 3.5 years, it costs taxpayers a LOT more each time tRump plays. Obama played most of his rounds at military courses within a short drive of the White House. He would drive to the course, play a fast round, and then go back to the White House. He would also play quite a bit during his two annual "big vacations" (Hawaii at Christmas and (usually Martha's Vineyard) in the Summer. When tRump plays golf he usually FLIES off the Florida (Mar a Lago) or New Jersey (Bedminster) for a long weekend. That's why tRump has spent more taxpayer money on personal travel in 2.5 years as the entire Obama family did in EIGHT!Trump plays golf after cancelling trip to Poland to observe Second World War anniversary commemorationsThe Independent Joe Sommerlad,The Independent 20 hours ago www.yahoo.com/news/trump-plays-golf-cancelling-trip-094800162.html
Supporters of US President Donald Trump hold banners as they attend commemorations marking 80 years since the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 2019 at Pilsudski Square in Warsaw, Poland: AFP/Getty Images
US president Donald Trump is under fire after finding time to play golf after he cancelled his trip to Poland to observe commemorative services remembering the onset of the Second World War.
President Trump was initially understood to be abandoning his visit to Europe in order to monitor the federal response to Hurricane Dorian as it approaches the southeastern coast of the US, but instead he flew from the presidential retreat of Camp David in Maryland to the Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia, on Saturday.
The decision to play 18 holes marks the 226th day Mr Trump has done so since entering the Oval Office, a habit that has attracted persistent criticism over the cost incurred by taxpayers.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham insisted he received hourly updates on the tropical storm zeroing in on Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas as he progressed around the course: “He has someone travelling with him to specifically brief him on an hourly basis.”
The president has since tweeted that he has been briefed about the latest mass shooting in Odessa, Texas, by attorney general William Barr and is expected to attend a meeting on Dorian at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters back in Washington, DC.
In Poland, the country’s president Andrzej Duda was joined by his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier to open day-long observances of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany‘s invasion of the Central European nation in 1939 with a ceremony intended to reflect a spirit of reconciliation.
Poland would remain under German occupation for more than five years and lost around six million citizens in the conflict. Today, Germany is one of Poland’s closest EU trading partners.
The memorial was held in Wielun, a central Polish town that was the first target of the Nazi’s deadly bombings, with observances starting at 4.40am, the exact hour that the war’s first bombs fell. The presidents, local officials and residents, among them survivors of the bombings, observed a minute’s silence in memory of that first attack’s estimated 2,000 victims.
Speaking in German and Polish, Mr Steinmeier asked for forgiveness on behalf of Berlin.
“I bow my head before the victims of the attack in Wielun, I bow my head before the Polish victims of German tyranny and I ask forgiveness,” he said. “We are deeply grateful for Poland’s hand extended in a gesture of forgiveness.”
“As the president of Germany I want to assure you that we will not forget, we will always remember about this, we want to remember and we are taking this responsibility that our history has imposed on us,” he continued.
Mr Duda thanked Mr Steinmeier for attending and said it was a form of giving “moral satisfaction.”
“Mr President, thank you for your presence and your attitude,” Mr Duda said. “I can see a man who has come with humility, a bowed head in order to pay homage... to share the pain.”
“Do you, gathered here, think it is easy to come to the town that has been destroyed by the Germans? To look in the eyes of those who have survived?” Mr Duda asked of those attending.
players.brightcove.net/624246174001/default_default/index.html?videoId=5837728067001 Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent Minds Minutes later, Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki and EU senior official Frans Timmermans led observances at Westerplatte Peninsula on the Baltic coast, the site of the war’s first battle as Polish troops put up resistance.
Unlike the commander-in-chief, US vice president Mike Pence was in attendance, as was German chancellor Angela Merkel, with many other world leaders expected to attend the day’s main event in Warsaw.
Additional reporting by AP
|
|