After Criticizing Barack Obama’s Golf Habit, Donald Trump Spent Close To One-Quarter Of His Presidency Golfing

For years, Donald Trump launched attacks on Barack Obama’s golfing habits, but a new report claims that Trump ended up spending significantly more time on the course than his predecessor — a total of one-quarter of his entire presidency.

As Mic reported, Trump’s time in office is coming to an end with a number of trips to the golf course during his Christmas holiday. On Wednesday, he marked his 313th visit to one of his company’s golf courses since taking office, the news outlet noted.

“Three. Hundred. And. Thirteen. Days,” the report noted. “More than 10 months. Nearly a quarter of his entire presidency spent hitting a ball with a stick.”

The report then pointed back to one of Trump’s criticisms of Obama, pulling a tweet from 2014 in which Trump claimed that his eventual predecessor spent too much time on the course when the United States was facing more pressing problems.

“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,” Trump tweeted.

As PolitiFact noted, Obama hit the links a total of 333 times over the course of his eight years in office.

Trump’s golfing has long come under criticism, especially after he had repeatedly claimed during the 2016 presidential campaign that he would be too busy to hit the links any more if he were to win the race. Critics say that he is improperly filtering taxpayer money to his own company through the trips, where members of the Secret Service have had to pay for carts and accommodations while he is on the course.

The criticism has grown sharper in the last week, when the president made the surprise announcement that he did not support the bipartisan coronavirus stimulus deal, speaking out against some of the spending and calling for the $600 direct payments to be increased to $2,000. After making the demand, Trump and his family left Washington, D.C., for his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he frequently went golfing.

As The Washington Post reported (via Seattle Times), a key ally pressed the president during a golf trip on Christmas Day, helping change his mind about refusing to sign the measure. As the outlet noted, Sen. Lindsey Graham discussed how they could come to a solution on the stimulus package without forcing Congress to renegotiate the entire package.

“We’d hit a shot, take a phone call. Hit a shot, take a phone call. Hit a shot, talk about what’s a good deal,” Graham said on Monday. “It was a very intense Christmas Day.”

Trump would eventually relent, signing the deal two days later but not before pointing out the parts he found unsatisfactory.