Donald Trump's golf habit has cost American taxpayers $100 million

Trump playing in Scotland last summer

Walter Einenkel

Daily Kos Staff

Saturday May 24, 2019 · 9:55 AM PDT

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As you may already know, Donald Trump has played twice as much golf as the previous president while in office. By the end of 2018, Trump had spent one-third of his time as president of the United States … playing golf. According to research done by HuffPosts’ S.V. Date, Trump has cost American taxpayers well above $100 million to cover his luxury habit of not working. According to Date, the breakdown in costs for Trump’s trips, both abroad and domestic, break down as follows:

• $81 million for about 24 trips to play golf in Florida
• $17 million for 15 trips to his New Jersey golf course 
• “At least” $3 million for a two-day trip to play golf in Scotland, almost half of which was spent on car rentals for his “entourage”
• $1 million for a tee-time at a Los Angeles resort.

That is 300% more than President Obama’s golf habit at the same point in time. These numbers sound about right, as reports of the exorbitant costs Trump’s golfing habit has incurred over the past couple of years have been well-documented. In September, it was reported that golf cart rentals at Trump’s courses cost taxpayers around $300,000. Trump has installed an expensive golf simulator in the White House for “executive time,” making the amount of time he’s spent just playing and swinging golf clubs vs. actually doing the job he’s supposed to do likely astronomical.

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

President Obama should have gone to Louisiana days ago, instead of golfing. Too little, too late!

45K

9:15 AM - Aug 23, 2016

And as HuffPost points out, Trump’s gearing up for another semi-unofficial trip abroad, this time to Ireland! It just so happens he will meet with “Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Shannon, just 30 miles by air from Trump’s golf resort in Doonbeg.” To put that into perspective, the White House hasn’t even announced tentative plans to meet with Irish leaders in the capital city of Dublin. But … Dublin isn’t near the kind of resorts that Trump can play golf at.

1. Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump
   

   "@nikkio: DonaldTrump: Only way to get Obama to do right for our Marine would be for every country club across USA to deny him golf access

   7:02 PM - 20 Oct 2014

   • 265 Retweets
   • 249 Likes
   • 

   66 replies 265 retweets 249 likes

   1. 1. Lewis Lustman‏ @Lewis_HireRight 6 Aug 2017

   Replying to @realDonaldTrump @nikkio

   He did more for the military than you'll ever do, Bone Spur.

   0 replies 2 retweets 26 likes

William Barr isn't Trump's personal attorney, he's the agent provocateur of authoritarianism

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday May 21, 2019 · 9:59 AM PDT

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When Donald Trump was young, attorney Roy Cohn passed onto him the same lessons that he did to Sen. Joseph McCarthy: always attack, never apologize, never admit a mistake. Taunt. Insult. Don’t worry about the facts. Don’t worry about the law. Just “Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court.”

For the past two years, Trump has desperately been seeking a replacement for this father figure, and now it’s clear he has found his man in Attorney General William Barr. In just a few months on the job, Barr has demonstrated a willingness to lie to the American people, flip the truth on its head, defy Congress and the Constitution, and live out that advice from Cohn: Tell them to go to hell, let’s take it to court.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Barr is deeply upset by those people who suggest that he’s turned the office of the attorney general into that of a personal attorney for Donald Trump. He insists that’s not the case. And for once, Barr may be telling the truth. He’s not Trump’s attorney. He’s there to defend the right of any Republican despot to ignore any law ever made, and to uphold the ideal of an authoritarian executive who answers to no one, on anything.

According to Barr, Trump is doing what a president is supposed to do: “provide leadership and direction” and not become “an errand boy for Congress.” By which he means that Trump is free to ignore congressional oversight—on any subject, and at any level of remove. In fact, as Barr’s new Office of Legal Counsel made clear on Monday, the official position of the Department of Justice is now that advisers to Trump are “absolutely immune” from congressional subpoenas. And, just in case the Congress is thinking of reviving powers not used since 1935, Barr is a step ahead of them. The OLC has already ruled that every member of the executive branch is exempt from Congress’ power of inherent contempt.

Neither of these ideas is supported by case law, but Barr is happy to fight it out in court, especially when his position means that the usual route of dealing with a congressional subpoena—by routing it through an appeal to the DOJ and a U.S. attorney—can be played for laughs. 

Barr is far from the only member of the Republican Party who holds a theory of an all-powerful unitary executive—when that position is, of course, not occupied by a Democrat—but his position is certainly among the most extreme. It was exactly Barr’s fanatical position on privilege and executive authority that got him back into the chair as attorney general. Now that he’s there, he’s showing that his unsolicited “Trump can’t commit obstruction” memo was just the tip of a goose-stepping iceberg.

The position Barr has taken is one in which there is not only no obligation for the executive to cooperate with Congress on any matter, but no means for Congress to solicit information except in the case of impeachment. And even then, Barr maintains that Congress still cannot obtain testimony or documentation from any of those members of the White House who enjoy “absolute immunity.”

It’s a position on congressional authority that certainly doesn’t match the rulings handed down during Watergate. But then Barr, like many other Republicans, believes that most of the rulings around Watergate were made incorrectly. Part of the reason for the extremity of the positions the White House is currently taking is the same reason that Alabama wrote a deliberately provocative bill on abortion in absolute defiance of current law: Both of them want a chance to take their case in front of this Supreme Court so that Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh can explain how the Constitution doesn’t say what it says.

Barr isn’t there to be an attorney for Trump. He’s in place to be an agent provocateur for authoritarianism, present only to plant bombs in the system. His idea of an executive immune to review isn’t one that was intended, or even contemplated by the people who framed Article II. In fact, it’s why that role isn’t in Article I. There is nothing in the Constitution that implies members of the executive branch are immune to congressional subpoena; nothing that implies they are immune to inherent contempt; and nothing at all that suggests the kind of massive expansion of privilege supported by Barr has any basis in law.

The Office of Legal Counsel, now once again under Barr’s thumb, was where he first served in the Justice Department, and where he helped to create rulings like the one that says that a sitting executive can never face indictment, no matter the gravity of his crimes. But the man who followed Barr in that position, Walter Dellinger, has a different view on Barr’s goals. “Protecting the president who has violated his oath of office and probably the criminal code,” says Dellinger, “is not an application of a strong view of executive power. That’s just wrong.”

But now that Trump has both his new Roy Cohn and his Justice "I Like Beer," wrong isn’t a thing. He can barely wait to get to court.

Tillerson talks to House committee about Kushner's meddling, Trump's reluctance to confront Russia

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Tuesday May 21, 2019 · 5:42 PM PDT

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When it comes to heroism in the current government, there’s a pretty low bar. Rex Tillerson may not have had any business serving as secretary of state to begin with, but he allegedly called Donald Trump a “fucking moron,” and so he’s kind of a hero to me. Sort of like The Penguin betraying the Joker before biting the head off a harp seal. I’ll take it. Whatever. He’s helping us stop the Joker. Gotham is grateful.

So it was again today when Tillerson spoke with the House Foreign Affairs Committee and dished on the ferocious incompetence of Boy Kush and the administration’s reluctance to confront Russia about election interference.
The Daily Beast:

Tillerson’s arrival at the Capitol was handled with extreme secrecy. No media advisories or press releases were sent out announcing his appearance. And he took a little noticed route into the building in order to avoid being seen by members of the media.

Tillerson reached out to the committee and expressed a willingness to meet, a committee aide said. In a more than six hour meeting, he told members and staffers that the Trump administration actively avoided confronting Russia about allegations of interference in the election in an effort to develop a solid relationship with the Kremlin, a committee aide told The Daily Beast.

Hmm, a “solid relationship” could mean a lot of things. It might simply mean there was a quid pro qu-oh, shit don’t release that pee tape! Who knows? But, yeah, I can only assume it had more to do with protecting Donald Trump than protecting our national interests — especially considering that Russia, you know, attacked us.

Tillerson told the committee that the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner at times impeded his ability to effectively communicate and introduce to President Trump policy proposals developed by State Department experts on major foreign affairs matters across the globe, not just in the Middle East. Kushner, a White House advisor, has publicly focused much of his international efforts on the Middle East and is set to unveil a Middle East peace plan in the coming weeks.

So Little Lord Fauntleroy eschewed the advice of the entire State Department in favor of his own imagined foreign policy expertise. That’s not unnerving or anything. Kushner is best known for buying a building for far too much money and convincing a woman with the worst male role model in the history of our country to marry him. So not exactly a heavyweight. On top of that, he’s a charisma black hole.

I mean, the guy makes Roger Stone look like JFK. I doubt he could score drugs at Burning Man. We really expect him to broker Middle East peace?

Thanks for trying, Rex, but I doubt any of this will change the fucking moron’s behavior.

Ted Lieu shames Trump over plan to pardon war criminals: 'You never served'

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Tuesday May 21, 2019 · 9:15 AM PDT

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One way to reliably signal that our country doesn’t care a whit about human rights or international law is to go out of our way to pardon war criminals. It’s beyond idiotic, and something anyone with a thimble full of brain matter knows you shouldn’t do. Which is why Donald Trump is currently contemplating it.

According to a Saturday New York Times report, Trump is considering pardons for “high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder and desecration of a corpse, according to two United States officials.” And, no, this has nothing to do with Eric and Don Jr.’s latest trip to Nevada. These are war crimes — the very kind that have always given Donnie’s bone spurs a voltaic tingle.

But as with most things Trump has no experience with and hasn’t bothered to study up on or sit still for a lecture about, he has no clue what he’s talking about.

But Rep. Ted Lieu, a decorated Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel and former military prosecutor, certainly does:

Ted Lieu ✔ @tedlieu

Dear @realDonaldTrump: You've never served. Military juries will convict members for war crimes based not just on morality. We who've served know that killing civilian children, women & seniors makes it harder to secure the peace & is a great recruiting tool for terrorists.

Maggie Haberman ✔ @maggieNYT

Trump May Be Preparing Pardons for Servicemen Accused of War Crimes - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/us/trump-pardons-war-crimes.amp.html#click=https://t.co/DCA77uBVym …

15.6K

8:42 AM - May 19, 2019

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Yup. By protecting bad apples, Trump will only succeed in making life more difficult and more dangerous for our active service members. In other words, he’s making the world a worse place for innocent civilians and our own soldiers in order to make a ham-handed political point and goose his gormless throng of cultists.

Then again, when has Trump ever thought a policy decision through or sought to do the right thing?

Birmingham, Alabama Pastor Has Powerful Sermon for Forced-Birthing Republicans.

Pastor David Barnhart

durrati

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Sunday May 19, 2019 · 8:12 AM PDT

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Pastor David Barnhart of St. Junia United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, delivered a powerful sermon on Facebook last June to the generation of vipers and hypocrites who are passing forced birthing legislation there and across the nation.

It is worth revisiting:

“They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.”

Truer word were never spoken. 

Thank you, Pastor Dave.

Farmer hammered by Trump tariffs tells CNN: ‘I’m off the Trump train’

First Amendment

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Thursday May 16, 2019 · 6:54 AM PDT

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If you don’t think Donald Trump is in trouble in the Midwest—think again.

A farmer and now-former Trump supporter tells CNN about the reality of Trump’s tariff war: “We’re in a free fall out here in agriculture. We’ve seen 30% decrease in prices of soybeans, and this isn’t all about soybeans.”

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CNN’s Kate Bolduan then reminded the farmer, Christopher Gibbs, that he voted for Trump because of his “can do” attitude, which this diarist can’t understand—but Mr. Gibbs’ reply tells us that maybe, just maybe, some farmers have had enough of Trump’s horrible presidency? “I was on the Trump train, I was off the Trump train, back and forth,” he says. “Finally got off at Helsinki. Helsinki was a mess to me. I couldn’t stand the waffling with Putin, so I’m off the Trump train.”

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When I watched this interview, my first thought was, How did Mr. Gibbs miss these warnings during the debates? Clear warnings that Donald Trump was a failed and terrible businessman? Warnings that he was indeed Putin’s puppet?

My second thought was, I was very angry. Then I thought for a moment: At the very least, this farmer has finally admitted his mistake, and that gives me some hope that there are others in the Midwest like him. I’m cautiously optimistic. Let’s hope they’ve finally learned their lesson about Trump, like Mr. Gibbs has.