Trump's history of attacking Obama for golfing in a crisis

Trump repeatedly attacked his predecessor for playing golf during his presidency

Donald Trump appeared to be playing golf while waiting for the presidential election results, despite repeatedly attacking former president Barack Obama for golfing in times of crisis.

While the US waited for a fifth day to have the 2020 US election officially declared for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, Mr Trump was pictured going to play golf.

Politico reporter Daniel Lippman tweeted: “Even as President Trump battles it out to try to win the remaining swing states whose vote counts are steadily slipping away from him, people at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va tell me they are expecting him to play golf later today.”

Despite spending one in five days playing golf in 2019, Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked former president Barack Obama for golfing during his time in the White House.

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Mr Trump first tweeted about Mr Obama playing golf on 15 August 2011, when he wrote: “@BarackObama played golf yesterday. Now he heads to a 10 day vacation in Martha's Vineyard.  Nice work ethic.”

President Trump went on to tweet about Mr Obama playing golf another 26 times, often commenting that he should be working instead.

In one example from 2013, Mr Trump criticised Mr Obama, tweeting: “PresObama is not busy talking to Congress about Syria..he is playing golf...go figure.”

And during the congressional gridlock in 2012, Mr Trump wrote: “Obama should play golf with Republicans & opponents rather than his small group of friends. That way maybe the terrible gridlock would end.”

In a comment from January 2015, he added of Obama: “He may play more golf than any human being in America, and I'm not sure that's good for the President.”

During a speech in 2016, Mr Trump criticised Mr Obama signing executive orders, commenting: “Everything's executive order because he doesn't have enough time because he's playing so much golf.

“He doesn't have enough time to convince Congress to do it. This guy plays more golf than people on the PGA Tour.”

Mr Obama issued 276 executive orders during his eight years as president, while Mr Trump ordered 193 in just one term.

While in 2014, Mr Trump tweeted: “President Obama has a major meeting on the NYC Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!”

Despite that criticism, Mr Trump was pictured playing golf twice over the memorial weekend this year, while the US spiralled towards 100,000 coronavirus cases. That figure is now more than 9.7 million, while the US has recorded 236,155 deaths.

After being criticised for playing golf while coronavirus cases rose, Mr Trump called the media “sick with hatred and dishonesty”, and once again called attention to Mr Obama’s golfing habits during his presidency.

He accused the media of not talking about “all of the time Obama spent on the golf course, often flying to Hawaii in a big, fully loaded 747, to play. What did that do to the so-called Carbon Footprint?”

While in another of his five tweets about golf, he added: “Barack was always playing golf”.

CNN fact-checkers worked out that Mr Obama spent 333 days playing golf during his eight years as US president, while by May 2020, Mr Trump had already spent 268 days at a golf course in less than four years.