A mere day after President Donald Trump promised the people of the United States of America that he was getting "back to work" following the Christmas holiday, CNN cameras captured him enjoying a round of golf at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
"I hope everyone is having a great Christmas," the president Tweeted on December 25, then tomorrow it’s back to work in order to Make America Great Again (which is happening faster than anyone anticipated)!"
Less than 24 hours later, a camera crew spotted and filmed Trump at the course with pro golfer Bryson DeChambeau, former pro Dana Quigley and Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga.
Perdue is perhaps one of the president's more ardent supporters in the Senate, sponsoring a bill to reduce legal immigration, serving as a fiery religious voice on Capitol Hill and as an equally outspoken critic of the Paris Agreement on climate change. The senator made waves in 2016 when he offered a quote from Psalms 109:8 as a prayer for outgoing President Barack Obama, which reads: "Let his days be few, and let another have his office."
The golf outing on Tuesday marks the president's 85th trip to the course in the 340 days he has been in office, according to White House press pool numbers. He has engaged in his favorite pastime on roughly a quarter of those days. The same experts found that he has spent over a third of his entire presidency at a Trump-branded property or resort.
This stands in contrast to statements the president made during his candidacy.
"I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf. Believe me," Trump said during an August 2016 rally.
He, along with many conservatives, criticized the amount of time Obama spent on leisure, which included trips to the golf course. In 2014 Trump tweeted, "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."
Obama played a total of 333 games of golf during his 2,920 days in office, according to PolitiFact. Should Trump continue in office for the same amount of time and maintain his current rate of golfing, he is on track to play over 747 games, a difference of over 76 percent.
Trump's right-wing supporters found little wrong with the president golfing the day after he promised to return to work, reacting angrily to CNN filming him doing so instead. Some, including agitator far-right Jack Posobiec and Mike Flynn Jr. (son of the dismissed and now embattled former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency), accused CNN of obsessively waiting in the bushes for hours at the golf course in order to spy on the president. The footage was, in this line of reasoning, not so much a sign of the president's obvious doublespeak, but of an urgent security threat by CNN:
This is the saddest CNN report ever.
You hid in the bushes for hours to get 17-seconds of footage of the president swinging a golf club.
I’m sure all of your parents are so proud https://t.co/jx2igO1n1i
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 27, 2017
Isn’t this a huge breach of security? @SecretService https://t.co/jx2igO1n1i
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 27, 2017
Idiots like this (who probably don’t play golf) have no clue how much business can be conducted on a golf course.
That 25.6% is misleading if you think all his golfing is done for leisure. https://t.co/jIEByNy3YJ
— 🇺🇸MFLYNNJR🇺🇸 (@mflynnJR) December 26, 2017
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