Trump making golf great again
The Trump-train hasn’t even left the station, but it’s already barreled off the tracks.
President Trump is under an assortment of investigations, facing plummeting job approval numbers and with ever-growing scrutiny about his seeming inability to tell the truth.
And we’re only 73 days into his presidency.
Two weeks ago, FBI Director James Comey added to Trump’s problems.
During his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Comey not only shot holes in Trump’s tweeted claims that former President Obama had “wiretapped” him while he was living in Trump Towers, but he announced that the Trump campaign team has been under investigation for questionable possible ties to Russia.
That was Monday.
By the end of that week, Trump’s pledge to “repeal and replace” Obamacare was pronounced dead on arrival.
You could hear champagne being uncorked all over America – except in the Oval Office, where Trump quickly commenced his finger-pointing.
First, he blamed the Democrats, as if they’d beaten Trumpcare to the pulp.
They hadn’t.
They’d merely been bystanders to the ill-conceived, Republican plan that was sure to kick millions of people off their health insurance, and at a higher cost for those people who kept it.
Then, Trump turned to his fellow Republicans known as the “Freedom Caucus.”
They’d demanded to wipe Obamacare from the books, while promising to take even more health care coverage from cash-strapped Americans.
The presidential candidate who’d vowed that we Americans would get “tired of winning,” had lost miserably.
So, Trump had no other alternative – he went golfing.
He golfs a lot.
America elected a president who thinks he’s Arnie Palmer.
I’m pretty sure that deep down inside, Trump compares the size of his Army to Arnie’s Army.
In the first nine weeks Trump had been in office he went golfing 12 times.
That includes the day after his Trumpcare debacle.
Fox News had announced he was hunkered down in the White House for a “working weekend,” when he was spotted in Virginia heading for his first T-shot.
At least he wasn’t headed for Mar-A-Lago, where his frequent weekend trips have cost American taxpayers an estimated $12 million in just over two months. According to the International Business Times, at that rate, Trump is on par to spend more money on personal travel in one year, than Obama spent during his eight years in office.
None of this would be an issue if Trump hadn’t made such an issue of Obama’s trips to golf courses.
“I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf,” Trump proclaimed during a campaign rally in Virginia last August.
He lied.
He plays golf a lot more than most presidents have.
“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,” Trump once tweeted.
Well, I’ll agree the U.S. does have its share of problems. One of them is a president who ignores his own hypocrisy.
In fact, some other Republicans have engaged in the same hypocrisy that Trump has.
Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, also made the same cheap claims about Obama playing golf, but he ignores Trump playing it more.
“Obama’s golf outings aren’t just bad optics, they’re foolish. And voters realize that,” Priebus tweeted in August of 2014.
Let’s not forget that it was Trump who repeatedly made a big deal about Obama not being born in America – and even after he furnished clear proof that he was.
After that, Trump decided he’d question Obama’s law degree by demanding that he release his college transcripts.
Trump has never released his either.
Come to think of it, despite saying he’d release his tax records if he was ever elected, he’s ignored requests to release them ever since.
To be honest, I’m not suggesting that Trump should stop golfing.
Maybe we’d all be better off if he just stayed on a golf course.
But I am suggesting he finally admits, that as president, he’s in way over his head.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net