After Trump visited golf properties a staggering 91 times already during his first year in office – a number that may still increase over the course of the next few weeks – a reporter asked the White House Press Secretary what the President actually accomplished on the links at which he spent nearly a third of his presidency.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for her part, gave an answer as unconvincing as it was unfounded.
Reporter: “Can you tell me the biggest single thing the president has accomplished for the American people during his time on the golf course?”
Sarah Sanders: “Developing deeper and better relationships with members of Congress” pic.twitter.com/iNPitqut3x
— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) January 2, 2018
She used Trump’s only veritable accomplishment while in office – the passage of the deeply unpopular Republican tax plan – as justification for the fact that the President played golf at least 75 times in 2017.
Is it a small wonder, then, that past presidents have been able to accomplish anything without having spent such an exorbitant amount of time with a golf club in hand.
Obama, for his part, played golf only 28 times in 2009. He managed to revamp the entire healthcare system by passing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare); passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA); passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; introduced strict auto emissions policies; rescued the United States’ largest car maker, General Motors; passed a historic climate change bill; nominated the nation’s first Hispanic Supreme Court judge, Sonya Sotomayor; and won a Nobel Peace prize.
It’s troubling, to say the least, that the president who promised to only make the best deals managed to accomplish so little after sacrificing so much time – and taxpayer money – to curry favor with a Congress that already has a Republican majority in both houses.
Or, as Trump might say, “sad.”
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