In the fall of 2014, real estate huckster Donald Trump phoned into Fox and Friends and tut-tutted about President Obama playing golf. The Fox hosts duly nodded at his sagacious wisdom: “You know, when you’re president, you sorta say like, ‘I’m gonna give it up for a couple of years, and I’m really gonna focus on the job.’ There are times to play golf – we all love golf – but there are times to play and times you can’t play. And it sends the wrong signal.”
Trump was ticked off because the president was golfing during an infectious disease outbreak. On the day he phoned Fox, the grand total of Ebola cases in America was…
Two.
If hypocrisy was a federal crime, Trump would be cuffed and carted away.
With 1.7 million confirmed Covid cases and nearly 100,000 civilians dead on the most solemn Memorial Day weekend since the holiday was officially consecrated, the flaming hypocrite is back on the links, sending what he once called “the wrong signal.” Golfing per se is not the issue. The chasm that separates his words and deeds is the issue.
In August 2011, he tweeted: “Barack Obama played golf yesterday…Nice work ethic.”
In December 2013: “Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!”
In October 2014: “Can you believe that with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.”
In July 2015, one month into his fateful candidacy: “I would not be a president who takes time off.”
In August 2016, addressing his suckers in the electorate: “I’m not going to have time to go play golf.”
Counting yesterday’s round, Trump has now played golf 218 times – far outpacing Obama’s golf rate. I did the math on Trump so you wouldn’t have to: Since taking office, he has played golf on the average of once every six days. Granted, yesterday’s round was his first since March 8 (right after he said he “wasn’t concerned at all” about the pandemic threats that his advisers kept warning him about), but, hypocrisy aside, it takes a uniquely sociopathic mind to resume the game on a uniquely solemn weekend, swinging a golf club with blood on his hands.
He has also found time on Twitter this weekend to accuse Joe Scarborough of murder, and to retweet somebody who called Hillary Clinton a “skank.” So when it comes to moral leadership, this guy will always shoot a triple bogey. And let’s contrast his dearth of empathy with Joe Biden’s remarks the other night, during his conversation with Stephen Colbert. Here’s what a real president sounds like:
“So many families – every one of those now over 90,000, it’s going to be well over 100,000 before this is over – who have lost somebody. (Virus victims) who have left behind a family, left behind somebody with a broken heart, with a feeling like the feeling you had when you lost somebody you love. There’s a big black hole that you seem to get sucked into. You’ve got to remember that, over time, that they’re still part of you, they’re your heart, they’re your soul. It’s who you are, it’s that connection that is real. And the only way I know, for me, how to get through it, is to find purpose. What would the person you lost, what would they want you to be doing? What can you do, to make it better?…I found my faith in Kierkegaard’s expression that faith sees best in the dark.”
Have a good holiday, everyone. Let Trump stay mired his mental sand trap. We can honor the dead and keep the faith without him.