Donald Trump has now spent 103 of his first 454 days back in office on the golf course, at an estimated cost of $144.2 million to taxpayers.
On Saturday, en route to his Virginia club, he received a message from a woman on the side of the highway, delivered in its simplest form. Both middle fingers, fully extended, out of an SUV window.
According to the White House pool report, the woman leaned out of her vehicle as Trump’s motorcade passed and delivered what can only be described as a double-barreled assessment of the presidency. The gesture was documented by pool reporters traveling with the president.
The timing was notable.
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Earlier that Saturday, CBS reporter Olivia Rinaldi had tried to ask Trump about recent attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz during a press conference in the Oval Office. He cut her off and had her removed from the event. Hours later, another woman offered her own commentary on the situation, and this time, there was no removing her from anything.
Trump’s golf attendance has become one of the more precisely tracked metrics of the second term. A
According to Did Trump Golf Today, the president has played golf for 103 of his first 454 days back in office, roughly 22.7% of his presidency, at an estimated cost of $144.2 million to taxpayers.
Some economists, reflecting on the first anniversary of Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, have suggested the country might actually have fared better with more of it. “If it was possible for Trump to have spent the last 14 months on the golf course, we would be in a better place,” Dario Perkins, global research head at TS Lombard, told The Guardian. That is a fairly specific kind of compliment.
Saturday’s gesture has a predecessor that looms large in Virginia political history.
In October 2017, Juli Briskman was cycling near Trump National Golf Club in Sterling when the presidential motorcade passed, and she raised her middle finger, a gesture captured by a White House photographer and widely circulated online. The consequences followed: Briskman was fired from her government contracting job for violating a code of conduct policy. “My finger said what I was feeling,” she told CNN, adding, “I’m angry and I’m frustrated,” a sentiment that aligned with her political stance.
In 2019, Briskman ran as a Democrat and won a seat on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, defeating an eight-year Republican incumbent. Her district includes the Trump National Golf Club. She has described this as sweet justice, and she is not wrong.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
