Donald Trump has started an August vacation, from Aug. 2-13, to Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., to spend time outside of the nation's capital, as has become custom in his two summers in the presidency. To date, the visit marked the 136th, 137th, 138th and 139th times the 45th President has visited one of his 17 golf clubs (and, for most of them, presumably played some golf) since becoming President on Jan. 20, 2017. He has now paid 140 visits to any golf course as President.
Trump arrived at his New Jersey flagship club on Friday, Aug. 2, preparing to spend nearly the first half of the month at his New Jersey Golf Club, where he has a condo built out for his living quarters near the club's pool, which the membership can use even when he's in the residence. Trump is conducting presidential business at the club, and he's already left the club for a political rally, which he plans to continue doing through election season in November. Trump is said to prefer playing golf in the mornings, and most of his time is considered unstructured. At the end of his vacation, he will have spent 147 days of his presidency at a golf course, bumping up how many times Donald Trump has been on a golf course to cover at least some portion of a day for 25.5 percent of his presidency.
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The White House doesn't typically acknowledge Trump was even playing golf. That is commonplace policy, particularly when Trump isn't playing with celebrities or pro golfers or doesn't have something to flaunt. Typically, the White House press pool indicates when Trump arrives at his golf clubs, then they are held in a holding location until Trump is done and moves to his next location.
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All but one round of golf has been at his clubs, playing once in Japan in Nov. 2017 with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and Japanese star pro Hideki Matsuyama.
Trump ended 2017 with 91 golf course visits and was just shy of 100 visits in Year 1 as President.
The Trump Administration, per typical policy, does not acknowledge that Trump is playing even a hole of golf, much less an 18-hole round. However, if he's going to the golf club for about 4-5 hours, you can be pretty sure he's playing golf. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden has asked the White House to provide the names of Trump's golf partners, as well for his clubs to provide visitor logs to get a sense of when Trump has played golf and with whom.
The President is certainly entitled to some leisure time, and golf has been an outlet for most Commanders-in-Chief dating back to the early 20th century. However, the reluctance to even acknowledge that this President plays golf conflicts with his almost relentless criticism of his predecessor, Barack Obama, who played an estimated 333 rounds of golf as President.
