Among the numerous facts about Donald Trump’s presidency that have slowly congealed into a dull, painful throb at the back of our brains, the fact that he’s spent literally 20 percent of his time in office at or near a golf course—despite the frequency with which he accused his predecessor, Barack Obama, of spending too much time on the links himself—is one of the more persistently throbby ones. Still, it’s not really Trump’s fault that he so frequently wants to get away from Washington and the duties of his job, not when he’s being forced to live out his days in the moldering presidential shitheap known as the White House, a building Trump has reportedly dubbed “a real dump.”
That professional appraisal of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue reportedly comes from Trump’s own delicious Mar-A-Lago cake-hole, per a new piece from Sports Illustrated that delves into The Donald’s golfing life. Interviewing numerous people who’ve hit the links with President No. 45, the resulting portrait is honestly kind of bizarre, presenting a world in which Trump is actually well-liked and happy, surrounded by people willing to suffer his bullshit and not call him on his numerous mulligans and casual golfers’ lies. It’s also where Trump himself relaxes, apparently to the point that he’s willing to badmouth a House he expended a considerable amount of energy to be miserable within.
To be fair, the White House—maintaining the stiff upper lip of an aging beauty that’s been rejected on the grounds that it’s not absolutely slathered in gaudy gold paint—has denied that Trump ever said anything of the sort. (All right, technically it was Trump’s staff who denied the rumor, but the image of the presidential mansion as a stalwart-but-cheated-on spouse was just too juicy to resist.) Meanwhile, the SI article suggests that there’s no likelihood that Trump will ever cease his constant golf vacations—it’s noted that he reportedly wants to be buried at his course in Bedminster, New Jersey—given that they’re apparently the only places on Earth where he’s actually good at something, and not constantly (and rightly) being screamed at by the entire world.