Where there’s golf, there’s Donald Trump—literally.
While his DOGE henchmen have been busy firing all those lazy federal workers, the president dialed it in for a fifth straight day from one of his golf clubs in South Florida.
He golfed on Wednesday at his Doral golf club in Miami after spending four days at his private Mar-a-Lago resort and home over an extended President’s Day holiday that allowed him to up his game before his scheduled return to the White House Wednesday night. His MAGA supporters cheered him on.
Meanwhile, over on BlueSky, progressive social media users posted the same video but eye-rolled over the president’s golf habit.
“Trump working hard to solve inflation,” posted Patriot Takes, which says it monitors “right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy.”
According to the site Trump Golf Track, which—as it suggests—tracks the amount of time Trump spends playing golf, the president has spent 30 percent of his second term in the White House golfing. That means he has played golf nine out of the 30 days that he has been president since Jan. 20.
For Trump, however, time spent on the golf course away from his duties in the Oval Office doesn’t mean he isn’t actively engaged in (his own) business.
Trump was set to speak Wednesday evening at a summit hosted by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, along with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, chairman of the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf, which does business with Trump-owned golf courses. Trump has also called for Riyadh to invest $1 trillion in the United States.
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House seeking comment about the president’s matters of golfing, and with whom he shared a game on Wednesday.
Also scheduled to speak at the Future Investment Initiative Institute Priority Summit in Miami Beach was TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who has forged a relationship with Trump amid the president’s embrace of the Chinese-owned social video platform. Their budding relationship may be hindered, however, by China’s condemnation of Trump’s “tariff shocks” that threatened to upend global trading.
Of course, golf also brings significant financial opportunity to the Trump family, with very little risk of congressional oversight with both the House and Senate controlled by Republicans.
“None of this is very surprising unfortunately,” Hui Chen, a former federal prosecutor and federal fraud expert, told The New York Times this week. “The entire force and power of the United States government is now part of the business support structure for the Trump family.”
In giving the green light for Elon Musk, head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to fire thousands of federal workers, Trump characterized employees of the U.S. government as bums who are scamming the system. Working from home. Dialing it in. From tennis courts, and golf courses.
“There’s a whole big, oh, you can work from home,” Trump said as he signed an executive order paving the way for mass firings. “Nobody’s going to work from a home. They’re going to be going out. They’re going to play tennis. They’re going to play golf. They’re going to do a lot of things. They’re not working.”
