Commander in Cheat

by Rick Reilly

  Wait. Our current president keeps goats on a golf course as a tax dodge?

  “Yes. Goats. To get an $80,000 tax dodge. A man who costs Americans nearly $4 million every time he goes to visit his golf course in Florida has found a way to save $80,000 in taxes.”

  That is so… genius!

  They don’t know the half of it. Even as president, Trump and his family have mixed shrewdness and self-dealing, politics and golf into a kind of not-quite-illegal but odorous machine that lets them get what they want.

  Take the helicopter pad Trump uses at Mar-a-Lago, his winter refuge. Trump pestered and yelled and bullied the powers that be in West Palm Beach to let him land his helicopter on his property, but he was always denied. Hell, in West Palm Beach, the waiters have helicopters. But when Trump became president, he insisted he needed the pad to land Marine One. National security. The town said okay, but only for as long as he was president and only for Marine One. Great. Trump built the chopper pad. One week later, Trump’s personal chopper, with a giant TRUMP painted on the side of it, was parked on the pad.

  Before he entered office, LBJ put his radio and TV stations into a blind trust. Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm. Both Clinton and Bush 43 put their businesses in blind trusts. Obama took his entire stock portfolio and put it in Treasury bonds. Not Trump. He didn’t change a thing except to say that “Don and Eric and Ivanka will be running things.” As a result, every time Trump plays golf at his courses in West Palm, Bedminster, or Washington, he’s putting money in his own pocket with free advertising, not to mention the cost of housing and feeding all that staff. (Staff even gets a discount in his pro shops.)

  If you thought Trump wouldn’t dare use the Office of the President to try to get what he wants for his golf courses, you don’t know Trump. It took only a few days after the election to prove it. That’s when he took a congratulatory meeting in Trump Tower with four Brits—two money guys who’d backed Brexit, a journalist from the right-wing journalist site Breitbart UK, and the very vocal pro-Brexit activist Nigel Farage. One of the Brits, Andy Wigmore, returned to London and told the BBC that Trump kept complaining about the windmills Scotland was putting up in the sea next to his Aberdeen course. (Maybe you heard: Trump really hates those windmills.)

  Wigmore quoted Trump as saying, over and over again, “They offend me.” He said Trump begged them all to go back to the UK and try to do something “about getting rid of the wind farms.”

  It got worse. When the BBC interview aired, the journalist from Breitbart, Raheem Kassam, immediately emailed Wigmore, according to CNN, and flipped out:

  WHY DID YOU GIVE THOSE QUOTES. This was a PRIVATE MEETING AND YOU HAVE F***** ALL OF US NOW.

  Kassam insisted Wigmore say the conversation “never happened,” an odd demand coming from a journalist. White House Spokeswoman Hope Hicks said Trump never brought up wind farms at all. Then CNN showed her the emails. Ooops.

  Try as they have, nobody has been able to get Trump to divorce his golf businesses interests from the country’s interests. In fact, Trump mixes them all the time. Since he has stayed at one of his properties roughly one-third of his days as president, American taxpayer dollars stuff his pockets, unchecked. In pursuit of them, he has no problem doling out free advertising for his golf properties. In an address to the South Korean National Assembly, Trump managed to get in a plug for how great his Bedminster course was. In an address of the U.S. Coast Guard, he made sure to mention that his Trump International is “one of the great courses of the world.” On his 55-million-follower Twitter feed, he’s raved about how “amazing” this course is or “magical” that one is or “spectacular” a third one is. A woman named Dani Bostick, a schoolteacher and Army wife from Winchester, Virginia, noticed it, too. On July 15, 2017, she called him out on it via Twitter:

  Nice job sneaking Bedminster into the caption of the picture. Nothing like free advertising on your huge social media account.

  Apparently, Trump didn’t appreciate that. She got blocked.

  Trump has found a way to cash in on the presidency like nobody who came before him. For instance, just in golf:

  • Did it seem unusual to you that a few weeks after Trump was inaugurated, he doubled the initiation fee at Mar-a-Lago from $100,000 to $200,000? Then again, why wouldn’t he? Suddenly, hanging around places like Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster, and Trump Washington gives an ambitious CEO or lobbyist fabulous access to the most powerful man in the world. Using the GHIN handicap system and membership rolls, USA Today found that at least 50 executives of companies that have federal contracts, plus 21 lobbyists and trade-group officials, are members at the clubs Trump visits the most often in Florida, Virginia, and New Jersey. Two-thirds of them played on one of the 58 days the president was there, USA Today reported.

  • Does it seem odd that a guy who promised to have “absolutely no conflict of interest with his businesses” continues to lord over those businesses? Former hockey star Mike Eruzione belongs to Trump Jupiter and sees it. “I talk to our pro [David Trout] a lot,” Eruzione says. “He [Trump] is very hands on. He calls and checks on how it’s doing, asks about certain greens, how the fairways are, where to move this or that, even though he’s the president. He’s a very hands-on guy.”

  Oops. Five minutes for blabbing.

  • Did it seem funny that the very day he met with the Queen of England at Windsor Castle, he flew directly to his Trump Turnberry golf course in Scotland, plugging it shamelessly on Twitter? “This place is incredible!” he wrote. He only had two days to prepare for his historic meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. Why wouldn’t he go there and start cramming? Maybe because Helsinki doesn’t have a Trump golf course to market?

  Trump gets a lot of deserved credit for what he did in the world of golf during The Great Recession of 2007. Then, golf was radioactive. People were leaving the game by the busload. A bank would rather help you buy a yacht than buy a golf course. But Trump went out and started buying golf courses with cash everywhere—five along the American east coast and three more in Scotland and Ireland. But where would a guy coming off four bankruptcies get that much cash to buy all those courses? And why was the self-proclaimed King of Debt paying cash?

  Some thought it had to be the Russians. They might’ve gotten that idea from his son, Eric, who, in 2014, told golf writer James Dodson, “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.… We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.”

  Congress followed up on those comments but never came up with anything. Since Trump won’t release his tax returns, it’s nearly impossible to know. So whence then?

  Allow me to take an educated guess.

  When you join any private golf club owned by one person—like Trump’s are—you must plunk down a fat initiation fee, which can run from $50,000 to $500,000. Trump Westchester gets $200,000. Trump Bedminster gets $350,000. You get your money back when you leave, as long as there’s a new person in line willing to take your place and pay the going initiation fee. (Don’t get ahead of me here.)

  Let’s say, just for the math, Trump Covfefe has 500 members, all of whom have put down $75,000 each. That’s $37.5 million in cash sitting in the bank. Most course owners save that money in case there’s a disaster at the course, i.e., moto-cross vandals hold an impromptu night-time event on your fairways or a massive flood hits that you’re not covered for. But not Trump. He keeps those fat fees. When you look at the contracts that Trump has his members sign, you notice the fine print says, “Membership deposits and all other club revenues are the property of the owner of the club and may be used for any purpose, in its sole discretion.”

  It means Trump can legally take that $37.5 million of those Covfefe dues and do whatever he wants to with it. He can buy hair dye with it. He can corner the ketchup market. Or he can buy golf courses. Lots and lots of golf courses.

  According to
the Washington Post, Trump spent $400 million on golf courses, wineries, and hotels between 2006 and 2015, all in cash. “It’s not unethical,” says National Golf Course Owners Association CEO Jay Karen. “It’s in the contract. But to me, it’s a risk. If something happens and you need that money for the course, it’s not there.”

  Sorry, folks. I know the Bolivian wombats ate the entire course, but all your money is in my fabulous course in Ireland. You should come see it!

  Or let’s say the bottom falls out of the economy and Trump wants to sell Trump Covfefe for $50 million, but he can’t get anywhere near that. Let’s say he can only get $5 million for it. The new owner buys the club AND the initiation fees, so they better be there.

  Remember when he informed the Trump Jupiter members that their refundable deposits were suddenly nonrefundable? Is it possible he’d already used their deposits to buy another course and he didn’t have it?

  Could this little maneuver also be what Trump referred to throughout 2018 when he alleged that special counsel Robert Mueller was “horribly conflicted” in his investigation of Trump and Russia? Mueller, then the FBI director, quit Trump D.C. in 2011—two years after Trump bought it—with no hard feelings, Mueller’s spokesman says. But the Washington Post reported Mueller quit the club and then “sent a letter requesting a dues refund in accordance with normal club practice and never heard back.” Trump said this was “a huge conflict of interest” and meant the investigation was tainted. It wasn’t much money. Most people paid about $40,000 to get in. “He probably didn’t get his money back,” says Trump D.C. member Ned Scherer, “but I don’t know anybody that’s gotten their money back since Trump bought it.”

  It’s all legal, but it also means he’s got a kind of golfing Ponzi scheme going: The money could be long spent, but it doesn’t matter because Mr. X, who is leaving, gets his deposit back from Mr. Y, who is coming. Trump never has to reach into his pocket. It all works great—until something really bad happens, like an infestation of glowworms ruins all your greens and you didn’t buy glowworm insurance.

  Whenever I talk to people who belong to Trump courses but hate Trump, they always say the same thing: “I’m just here to play golf. It’s got nothing to do with Trump. I’d never support him personally.”

  Memo to them: When you forked over your $200,000, it went right in his pocket.

  Trump as president is baffling to the political world, but to we golfers, he speaks our language. Often, he speaks it at the excruciatingly wrong time, but he speaks it.

  For instance, when 17 people were murdered at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Trump wanted teachers to start packing guns in class. But not just any teachers. “I want highly trained people that have a natural talent… like hitting a golf ball… or putting.… How come some people always make the 4-footer and some people, under pressure, can’t even take their club back!”

  STAFFER: Mr. President, there’s been yet another mass murder in our schools!

  TRUMP: Find me a good putter!

  Of his dalliances with the Kremlin, Trump once said, “This Russia stuff is nasty business. Much nastier than trying to make a three-foot putt.”

  For the rest of the world, it’s an ethical horror show, but for his golf buddies, Trump as president is a hoot. A friend of mine is tight with Trump. Has been forever. Talks to him once a week. He wouldn’t speak on the record, but he summed it up like this: “Look, The Donald is The Donald. He’s fun. He’s nuts. He’s full of shit. He’ll probably go down as the worst president of all time, but he’ll always be a friend of mine.”

  Trump’s pal, architect Tom Fazio, says the world takes Trump way too seriously. “I love that Donald will say anything. I mean, anything! He just shoots from the hip and crazy stuff comes out. He’s always been like that. But the press thinks he’s serious. He’s usually not serious.”

  But… but… but… we’re talking about nukes, climate change, refugees, guns, Russia, China, war, the future of the nation, and the future of life on this big ball. Maybe it’s time he got a little serious?

  Neither Trump nor anybody with the Trump Organization would talk to me or take my questions for this book. But maybe the whole problem with Trump’s presidency is golf itself. Golf is a solitary game. In golf, it’s just you and that great big course waiting with all its perils and traps. But to run the world, you need teammates. Trump hates teammates. That’s one reason he loves golf so much. He’s always in a cart by himself, 100 yards ahead of everybody else, just Him and his caddy, the better to kick and throw and foozle. But you can’t kick and throw and foozle your way through a presidency. You can’t cheat and fudge and fake running the world, for one good reason:

  You don’t own the course.

  16

  THE STAIN

  Remember, Ricky, golf is a gentleman’s sport.

  —JACK REILLY

  WHEN JAPAN SURRENDERED AT the end of World War II, my Army lieutenant dad was assigned to duty in Tokyo. He’d heard that Emperor Hirohito played golf. So he went to the Imperial Palace and knocked on the guard house door. When they asked what he wanted, he said, “Well, I wondered if the emperor might like to play golf with me this afternoon.”

  That’s how it’s always been in my family. Golf solves everything. Our very bones are made of balata. The whole family golfs—nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts, nearly every single one of us. I can remember, when I was six years old, my mom, dad, and brother being on the pages of the sports section because they all were playing in the same tournament. I have an aunt who still wins her flight and she’s 91. We have a giant nine-hole family tournament every year—The Reilly Roundup—and everybody wears a yellow shirt, just like the one we buried my dad in.

  So when a man like President Donald Trump pees all over the game I love, lies about it, cheats at it, and literally drives tire tracks all over it, it digs a divot in my soul and makes me want to march into the Oval Office, grab him by that long red tie, and yell, “Stop it!”

  You can think Trump has made America great again. You can think Trump has made America hate again. But there’s one thing I know: He’s made golf terrible again.

  We were just getting past the stereotype of golf being a game for fat, blowhard, rich white guys playing on fenced-off courses while people of color push lawnmowers behind them—and along comes Trump.

  We were just getting people out of their stupid golf carts and back to walking, the way golf is best—when along comes Trump, a man who believes exercise only leads to death, who never walks when he plays, even in defiance of his walk-only rules at Turnberry and Aberdeen.

  We were just getting millennials to think golf was cool again with stylish, athletic players like Tiger and Jordan Spieth and Lexi Thompson—when along comes Trump in his 1990 Dockers ready to bust at the seam playing overwatered, gold-doorknob golf courses with all his cronies, making golf about as cool as Depends and leaving a big orange stain on the game we may never get out.

  Trump treats golf like it’s some sort of reward for being rich. In fact, that’s exactly what he thinks. “I’d like to see golf be an aspirational game,” he has said more than once, “where you aspire to join a club someday, you want to play, you go out and become successful. That’s the way I feel.”

  Enjoy bowling, poor people! Sucks to be you.

  He said it to a Golf Digest reporter once, and the reporter was flabbergasted. He replied, “So you’d like [golf] to be an elitist activity?”

  Trump: “It was always meant to be, and people get there through success.”

  No, that’s never what it was meant to be. It was a game invented in Scotland by shepherds. In Scotland, it’s still a game of the people. It’s available and affordable to everybody from the blue bloods who live in the stately mansions to the rough hands who laid the bricks. At most golf clubs in Scotland, you finish your round, tip your caddy, then drink with him at the bar afterward. He’s a member.

  Golf in America isn’t the least bit Trumpy, either. The averag
e price of four hours of fresh-air fun in America is $35, according to the National Golf Foundation. It’s too wonderful a game to confine to any one set of people. Ninety percent of golfers play primarily at public courses. Golf is for everybody of any age, race, or bank account. So what’s wrong with that? Okay, they’ll never have white Rolls-Royces or solid-gold telescopes, but why can’t they have golf?

  “Any golf, any place, any time is going to do a soul good,” Ben Crenshaw once told me. “It’s not just for the rich. Golf is for everybody. Golf makes a difference in people’s lives. It doesn’t matter who you are, young and old, rich or poor, it’s a game that you can stay with the rest of your life. There aren’t many games like that.”

  Golf should be aspirational? That’s not what Arnold Palmer thought. The son of a club pro, Arnie brought golf to the plumbers and the typists.

  Golf is a reward for making money? That’s not what Tiger Woods thinks, either. The son of a Vietnam vet, the first black winner of the Masters, he’s opened up the game to hundreds of millions of people.

  Golf is a reward for success? That’s not what The First Tee thinks. It gives low-income kids a chance to learn golf’s gifts of skill, manners, and friendship, for free. Ask Tom Watson. You go to his house and his trophy cases are mostly empty. They’re on loan to The First Tee.

  If golf was only for country club kids, the world would’ve never known Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Arnie, Seve Ballesteros, Tiger Woods, Michelle Wie, and 100 other great players.

  But here’s where Trump is killing my game: Only 8.5% of Americans play golf, which means 91.5% don’t really know what it’s about. They don’t get the jubilation of watching a little ball that was just sitting there a few seconds ago rocket off against a bright blue sky to a target 300 yards away no wider than a broomstick. They don’t get that 18 briskly walked holes carrying your bag is a joyous way to work out. They’ve never known the feeling of laughing with three friends all afternoon so hard that you just gotta go an emergency 9. How many of that 91.5% won’t even try the game now because of Trump? How many more will listen to his blowhard golf bragging and hear about his shameless cheating and avoid golf like bed bugs?