The real reason Donald Trump has scaled back on golf
Let’s face it, golf isn’t exactly anybody’s idea of the kind of sport you want for a good physical workout if you’re using a golf cart, particularly if you routinely violate golfing etiquette by driving your cart on the green. In golf, by definition, the player who works the least is the one who usually wins. That’s why it’s an old man’s game. John D Rockefeller famously played golf every day well into his 90s.
We can’t be 100% sure, because the White House refuses to allow the press pool to shadow Trump on the golf course. But we do know his official schedule has him at or near his favorite golfing locations less and less lately. So why isn’t Trump playing much golf these days – or any at all? Is it because his workload is so great he hasn’t had time? Or because, after complaining bitterly for years about President Obama’s golf-playing ways, his conscience has finally caught up with him?
We doubt it. Trump is without question the laziest person in the history of the presidency. And a critical prerequisite for a pestering conscience is having an actual conscience to begin with. No, we think Trump isn’t playing much golf, a game he clearly loves almost as much as he loves hurting people who disagree with him, because he lacks the stamina these days even for golf.
Recall Trump’s late arrivals and early departures from meetings at the G7 conference, his sleepy, low-energy attendance, and his addled, befuddled, semi-coherent Fox and Friends interview on the 15th of June. Donald Trump is running out of juice, like a cymbal-banging bunny that somebody forgot to resupply with Energizer Batteries. Or maybe even he has finally been overwhelmed by his growing scandals, children in cages, a laughably poor deal with North Korea, and the moves Michael Cohen is making against him.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.