Kathrine Frich
Trump claimed he took a massive break from his favorite sport before the November 2024 vote.
When election season heats up, politicians love to remind voters how much they sacrifice for the job.
Often, they boast about missed family dinners and sleepless nights.
Some even claim to give up their favorite hobbies completely to focus on the race.
A bold claim
President Donald Trump recently decided to highlight his own campaign trail sacrifices. He sat down for a Sunday interview with Trey Gowdy on Fox News to discuss his work ethic.
During the broadcast, he made a sweeping statement about his schedule. He claimed he took a massive break from his favorite sport before the November 2024 vote.
“I didn’t play golf. I didn’t do anything for 120 days, and I worked,” he told the network according to Huffpost.
That sounds like a brutal stretch of non-stop campaigning. But there is one glaring problem with this story, because the simple math completely misses the mark.
That day in September
The president was actually swinging a club roughly 50 days before the election. We know exactly where he was on September 15.
He was playing a quiet round at Trump International Golf Course West Palm Beach, until chaos broke out. In fact, that specific outing made headlines across the globe for a very dark reason.
Secret Service agents spotted Ryan Routh near the fifth hole. The New York Times published extensive reports on the terrifying thwarted assassination attempt that unfolded that afternoon.
Routh received a life sentence earlier this year. It is highly unlikely anyone could forget such a dramatic afternoon on the links.
Security over sports
The terrifying event was the second attempt on his life in a matter of months. Security fears immediately took priority.
Those severe threats forced him to abandon the fairways entirely as Election Day rapidly approached. Taking a break from the game made perfect sense.
Keeping him safe in an open outdoor area had become incredibly difficult for his security detail. But turning a 50-day necessary safety pause into a 120-day display of pure work ethic ignores the hard facts.
The timeline is off by more than two months.
Tracking the time
Now, the president has returned to his regular golfing routine. And his favorite hobby continues to carry a truly massive financial burden for the American public.
A tracking website called didtrumpgolftoday.com monitors his whereabouts constantly, and their latest data reveals exactly how often he visits the clubhouse.
Since starting his second term, he has played golf on 125 out of 589 days. The site estimates those rounds have cost taxpayers $175 million so far.
Sources: Huffpost, Fox News, The New York Times, didtrumpgolftoday.com
