In less than five years, Trump has played as much golf as Obama did in eight

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared on CNN Sunday morning, giving host Jake Tapper a chance to note the incongruity between cuts to food assistance programs during the on-going shutdown and President Trump’s Roaring-20s-themed Halloween party at his exclusive Florida club.

After Tapper played a clip of former president Barack Obama criticizing Donald Trump, Bessent (himself worth hundreds of millions of dollars) shrugged off his billionaire boss’s extravagance with a bit of whataboutism.

“I believe President Obama played a record amount of golf of any president,” Bessent said, “so I’m not sure why he’s out there throwing stones.”

There are lots of ways in which we could parse that response, including that it does little to nothing to address the actual tension that Tapper was noting. But, as someone who’s been tracking Trump’s golf habit since his first term, I’ll point out another issue with Bessent’s response: It’s embarrassingly off-the-mark.

Barack Obama did frequently play golf as president, so much so that it became a point of criticism among Republicans (including Trump) and resulted in the creation of a website focused on tracking his outings. From that site we can see how Obama’s golf outings evolved, slowly in his first term and more energetically after his reelection.

When we overlay Trump’s first-term golf outings, though, you can see that he rapidly outpaced his predecessor.

Then Trump was himself reelected (after a four-year hiatus). Since retaking office in January, he’s played golf at an even more rapid pace than he did eight years ago.

You’ll notice the qualifier “likely” on those charts. That’s because Trump, unlike Obama, doesn’t actually report his outings. Sometimes we learn about rounds played from social media reports or photos taken at the private clubs where he invariably plays. But it is possible that some of the times that he goes to Trump Organization-owned clubs and goes off the radar for a few hours, he’s doing something other than hitting the links. History has shown, though, that the safest assumption is that he’s actually playing golf.

The Obama Golf Counter estimated that Obama played just over 300 rounds of golf as president. That’s probably low; CBS News reporter (and keeper of presidential data) Mark Knoller had the count at 333 over Obama’s two terms. That is in fact more than the 259 outings Trump made in his first term — although spread over eight years. Even if we tack another 30 rounds onto the second-term total above, Trump still outpaced Obama by more than 30 rounds.

There’s another important distinction we need to mention. Obama’s golfing almost always took place at publicly owned courses, with partners who were reported to the press. Trump’s golfing, on the other hand, occurs almost exclusively at courses owned by his private company, meaning that his trips to those clubs are an opportunity for Trump Organization customers to hobnob with or lobby him. (The White House rarely reveals the identities of those who join Trump on the course.) Trump supporters often talk about this difference as though it’s somehow better that Trump played at Trump Organization courses, perhaps assuming that makes it less expensive. It doesn’t.

We’re overlooking an important point, though. Again, Trump has returned to the White House and returned to playing golf. So far this term, by my running tally, he’s already at 72 rounds — about one on every four days of his second term. What that means, then, is that Trump has played an estimated 331 rounds of golf over his two terms, just two shy of Knoller’s total for Obama.

And I’m writing this on Sunday morning, with Trump currently at Mar-a-Lago in southern Florida. That usually means that he’ll head to his nearby golf club for a round before heading back to Washington. If he does, he’ll be only one shy of Knoller’s total for Obama.

Bessent could still be proven correct, I suppose, if Trump plays zero more rounds of golf during the three-plus years remaining in his second term. I am going to go out on a limb and say that this is unlikely to occur.

Photo: Trump, ready for golf at his private club in Scotland. (White House/Flickr)