Donald Trump has come in for harsh criticism for planning a 17-day “working vacation” at one of his own properties even as his government is struggling to respond to the spread of coronavirus.
The announcement of the president’s holiday at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey came as Mr Trump was accused of minimising the coronavirus threat to protect his hotels from a slump in business.
Walter Shaub, a former director of the Office of Government Ethics, hit out at Mr Trump in a pointed tweet:
“Nothing says “kleptocracy” like a hotelier POTUS seeking a bailout for the hotel industry – nothing, that is, except golfing at his own resort all weekend instead of fighting the pandemic that triggered the bailout (as his spouse uses tax money to build herself a tennis pavilion).”
Presidential vacations are a somewhat awkward topic for Mr Trump, who spent years criticising Barack Obama for playing golf instead of working before he himself took office.
In 2014, he tweeted that Mr Obama’s golfing during a crisis made him worse than Jimmy Carter, the epitome of weak leadership in a crisis as far as Republicans are concerned – and golf proved a rich seam for Mr Trump to mine on the campaign trail.
At a rally in late 2015, he riffed on the subject to a fired-up crowd: “Obama, it was reported today, played 250 rounds of golf, and he’s gonna be in Hawaii I think, did they say, for three weeks?
“How can a president – for three weeks? I don’t have time for that … 250 rounds, that’s more than a guy who plays in the PTA tour plays!”
Mr Obama played golf 333 times across his eight years in office. The website Trump Golf Count, meanwhile, counts 249 visits to golf courses by Mr Trump since his inauguration just over three years ago, with 177 confirmed games.
As Mr Trump prepares to decamp to New Jersey, it remains unclear whether he has been tested for coronavirus despite possibly being exposed at CPAC. His vice president Mike Pence, whom he has put in charge of the response to the outbreak, said he himself has not yet been checked.
