Donald Trump loves the sport of golf, so much so that he’s apparently willing to cheat to no end. That’s according to sports writer Rick Reilly, who recently wrote a book about Trump’s alleged penchant for taking short cuts in the game.
In an appearance in MSNBC’s Morning Joe this Tuesday, Reilly talked about how Trump won the 18 club championships that he often brags about.
“He said when he buys a new course, he plays the first round by himself and calls that the club championship,” Reilly said. “So I started calling around, people said, ’Yeah, one day he was at Trump Philly, and we played the club championship at Trump Bedminster, and he called and said, ‘Who won the championship?’ They said ‘Joe Shmoe’ shot 76, Trump goes, ‘I shot 73 up here at Trump Philly, make me the champion.’”
Reilly added that Trump uses questionable club championships to bolster his presidential skills.
“When he started campaigning on this as ‘I’m a winner, I can close out, I’ve won 18 club championships, and that’s against the best players,’ that bothered me,” Reilly said. “I don’t know anything about politics — you guys know about politics — but I know about golf. You don’t get to do that.”
In a later appearance on CNN, Reilly upped his critique of Trump’s gold credentials with a challenge.
“I will bet him $100,000 I can beat him, but he can’t use his cheating caddies,” Reilly told CNN’s Don Lemon. “He can’t go to his course and he has to have a rules guy follow him, same as me.”
Longtime sportswriter Rick Reilly claims in a new book that President Trump frequently cheats at golf and says famed golfer "Arnold Palmer would be rolling in his grave about the big orange splotch he's putting on the game that I love" https://t.co/JuRNIbSOcp pic.twitter.com/tkQxp5uKOE
— CNN Tonight (@CNNTonight) April 3, 2019
Reilly commented on Trump’s issues with Puerto Rico, saying that they stem from a golf course deal that went bad. He also added that the late golf champion Arnold Palmer would be “rolling in his grave about the big orange splotch” that Trump has put “on the game that I love.”
Featured image: screen grab/CNN Tonight
