The Washington Post has two reporters on this scoop. It seems that President Trump has installed a golf simulator in the White House. It’s a replacement for one President Obama had installed previously.
President Trump has installed a room-sized “golf simulator” game at the White House, which allows him to play virtual rounds at courses all over the world by hitting a ball into a large video screen, according to two people told about the system.
That system replaced an older, less sophisticated golf simulator that had been installed under President Obama, according to two people with knowledge of the previous system.
Trump’s system cost about $50,000, and was put in during the last few weeks in a room in his personal quarters, a White House official said.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the president’s private residence, said Trump had paid for the new system and the installation personally…
The White House official said Trump has not used his new golf simulator during executive time — or at all since it was put in.
No one will say exactly what system he bought but the Post notes that three of his golf courses contain systems made by Track Man. The promotional clip below shows what those look like.
Did we know that Obama had installed a golf simulator? It seems to me that would have been big news a few years ago when tracking how many games of gold Obama played was an issue for some, including a guy named Donald Trump. This site made a list of 27 times Trump tweeted about Obama playing golf, most of them critical. Needless to say, there are plenty of people teeing off on this today:
https://twitter.com/DonCheadle/status/1095734332914888707
Trump gets a new ‘executive time’ toy — a $50,000 state-of-the-art golf simulator https://t.co/nTjsCE48hk
— Raw Story (@RawStory) February 13, 2019
Please tell me this $50,000 didn't come out of taxpayer money – especially since we've already spent millions for his fees and security on the innumerable weekend rounds. https://t.co/5EgnPyC4UC
— Amy Siskind 🏳️🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) February 13, 2019
In the past several weeks, Trump hasn’t played as much golf as he’s used to – but not to worry since he’s installed a “room-sized” golf simulator at WH. The cost: $50K. Meanwhile, executive time consists of 60% of his schedule https://t.co/ARZf3N5z5t
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 13, 2019
There’s a lot more like that but I avoid highlighting tweets by people with fewer than several thousand followers. What’s clear is that some of the people responding to the headline, including Manu Raju, didn’t read the story which says that a) Trump paid for this himself and b) he hasn’t used it yet.
The presidency is a stressful job which visibly and quickly ages the people in it. They need some downtime to keep from being crushed by the weight of it. Of course, they can’t say that. The real irony behind the partisan sniping over this is that golf seems to be one of the few things that Trump and Obama really have in common. Here’s a video which shows the system which might (they wouldn’t confirm it) be the one Trump had installed:
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