President Trump criticized former president Barack Obama for golfing too often. Now the White House is defending his own frequent outings. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
Invariably, whenever we look at how much time President Trump spends at the golf courses that bear his name, we incur one of two responses or both.
1. The president is entitled to time off. 2. Why shouldnt he go to properties that bear his name?
To which the appropriate responses are: (1) He is. However! and (2) For at least one very good reason.
Or, to go into a bit more detail:
Sure! The president, like anyone else, is entitled to some down time. And, of course, the president unlike anyone else never really gets any. Hes always on duty, always available as needed.
When we point out that Trump is playing a lot of golf (as we did on Sunday), the point isnt that he should only be either sitting at a desk making presidential decisions or asleep. The point is that Trump himself, piggy-backing on the anti-Barack-Obama Republican rhetoric of the past eight years, repeatedly insisted that unlike Obama he wasnt going to spend time playing golf if he was elected president.
One example:
Another:
Another:
And on and on.
Again, Trump was simply picking up on a line of argument that was common on the right. It seems that for every dismissal of Trumps golfing as an issue here from his former campaign spokesman
there are easy examples of a differing view when the person in the White House was Barack Obama.
Obama played golf about once every 8.8 days. Trump has likely played once every 5.5.
But we dont really know that, because the Trump White House is unusually coy about when he is or isnt playing golf. Hes made at least a dozen visits to Trump-branded golf courses (and other Trump properties) since he became president, but we only know for sure that he played golf on some of those occasions.
The White House press office has only confirmed that Trump has played golf on a few occasions, preferring as press secretary Sean Spicer did last week to imply that Trump was instead holding important meetings. On Sunday, Trump spent only a brief period of time at his club in Sterling, Va. not enough to play a full round. Usually hes at his golf clubs and unaccounted for for hours, more than enough time to play 18 holes. (The smart money is on Spicer noting during an upcoming press briefing that Trump visited his club this weekend without playing golf.)
How sensitive are the White House and its allies about Trumps golfing? It apparently bears a news update from the Trump-friendly Fox News when Trump doesnt head to his club in Florida for the weekend.
Mind you, this wasnt true: He almost certainly played golf on Saturday, given social media posts showing him puttering around the course on a golf cart.
We can here apply the parent-of-a-small-child test to Trumps golfing. If the White House thinks its no big deal for the president to play golf, why is it so eager to minimize his doing so?
The chart above shows the regularity with which Trump heads to Trump-branded properties doing so about once every three days over the course of his presidency.
Whys that worth noting? In part because its the president using his office to tacitly (if not explicitly) promote his personal business. Trump repeatedly promised a clean break from his personal businesses once he got to the White House, but documents show that he still benefits from the Trump Organization financially. As The Posts Rosalind Helderman and Drew Harwell wrote last month, he retains ownership of the business and will personally benefit if the business profits from decisions made by his government.
Even when he doesnt directly receive payment, he is still reinforcing a symbiotic relationship with his private brand. Last week, the government approved Trumps continued ownership of the Trump hotel that sits a few blocks from the White House, because he wouldnt receive money from it directly while in office. (The Trump Organization leases the building from the government, with the stipulation that no elected official can benefit from it.) Trump critics point out that the property still benefits from its relationship with the president who has visited the property several times since being elected president, effectively helping to promote the property that his business still operates.
Then theres the question of how much government money is spent on Trump properties. Weve looked at this before, estimating that each trip to Mar-a-Lago in Florida costs the government some $2 million. While most of that cost is spent on transportation, the amount that is paid to the Trump Organization isnt clear. There are reports that the Secret Service and the Department of Defense sought space in Trump Tower, where they would be paying Midtown Manhattan rental costs to the Trump Organization.
Put another way, its not less problematic that hes going to his own properties, its more problematic at least in terms of concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Theres also a prohibition in Article II of the Constitution, setting the presidents salary for a term and stating that he shall not receive within that period any other emolument payment from the United States, or any of them.
In this hyper-partisan age, we are constantly reminded that prohibitions and priorities are far more subjective than we may have thought, allowing someone to, say, rail against a president who plays golf for recreation and then, later, to play golf nearly every weekend of his own presidency. It is also clear that, despite partisan protestations, there is a reason to point out such hypocrisies as well as potential (or obvious) conflicts of interest.
In the future, at least, complaints about the media doing so can be redirected to this article, saving everyone arguing about this issue some modicum of time.
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Donald Trump's golfing is a political problem thanks to Donald Trump - Washington Post