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Hey, guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. And I am today going to be talking about two of my favorite topics, Donald Trump and golf. There was some video yesterday that lit up the Internet that clearly shows Trump bending the rules, to put it generously, about golf. And it just, I couldn't not talk about it. Even though I'm like 24 hours late, I had to talk about it because I have lots of thoughts about this. I think it says a lot about him. Before we get into it, subscribe to the feed. You're not going to want to miss this one. Okay. All right, so I want to go through. Well, let's just start by setting up the situation because it's important to at least have some context here. Trump is overseas. He's at his club in Turnberry. He's doing all this incredibly consequential diplomacy. He's talking to European leaders. He announces a fairly substantial trade deal with the eu, but he's at one of his clubs. And what does he do? Of course, he naturally he goes and he plays, plays golf because he loves playing golf. Even though he rose to political power by mocking relentlessly Barack Obama for playing golf, he plays so much more golf than Barack Obama. Now. Look, I don't begrudge the guy for playing golf. I too would play a lot of golf if I had the opportunity to do it. And I think it's a good stress relief. Golf's awesome. So he's used it actually, interestingly enough, to enhance his appeal, even though he used it to criticize Obama and worsen Obama's appeal. All those mag influencer types who love Donald Trump on the Internet, they kind of suck it up in weird, like, cultish ways. So yesterday as he was playing on Turnberry, clearly the word was spread to all these people on the Internet that Donald Trump was the greatest 79 year old golfer the world has ever seen. There was a litany of pro Trump tweets from MAGA types being like, I cannot believe how gorgeous his swing is. Have you ever seen anything like it? I mean, there were like, it was like, you know, verbatim. Just revealed. President Trump's swing is being shown off in Scotland and people are amazed at his forum. For somebody nearly 80 years old, Democrats have spent months trying to say he's not fit for office. Look at that cat turd with the goods. Anyway, so that's the setup for this video emerges yesterday of what is clearly Donald Trump's caddy. And I'm going to play it and I just want to, like, go through it kind of scene by scene to understand what's going on here. Let's play the first video. All right, so here you have the caddy. Let's pause it for a second. There is no ball there. There's no ball there. Everyone can see there's no ball there. There's two caddies. They're going into this area with the. The sort of yellow tile grass that's called the fescue. For those who don't play golf. That's just, you know, where balls go to die. You hit a ball in there, off your tee shot, you find it. Maybe sometimes you don't because the grass is so heavy and thick. But if you find it and you got to hit out of that stuff, chances are you're not going to get a clean hit out of it. You're going to shank it. You're going to go, you know, half the distance you want to go. You got to come in hard with your swing. That's hard for a 79 year old to do. You got to club up hard again for 79 to do. And look, you can see a bunker right there. So not only that, the chances are you could possibly top it, or it just hits a ton of grass. Your blade hits a ton of grass, and you chunk it and you go right into that bunker. It's a dangerous shot, a really dangerous shot. You would rather be in the fairway, which is the shortest grass right there. But you can't get away with just dropping a ball in the fairway as if it, you know, your tee shot landed. That's just going to be ridiculous. People would notice that. Instead, what you do is you do what you do here. You pull the golf cart up really close to that bunker, maybe block of you from your buddy who was over on the other side of the fairway. Okay? And then you have your caddy pretend like he's going to look in the fescue for your ball. And then you sort of like quietly, secretly, without much fanfare, just take that ball from your pocket and kind of drop it casually as you walk, pretending that the ball is actually in that first cut of rough right before the bunker, which gives you a decent lie so you don't have to worry about putting in the bunker. Let's press play and see if that happens. Oh, look at that. There's the ball. There's the ball. Does Donald Trump even flinch? That's. He doesn't even flinch. The guy that I would, you know, he knows, you know that this is routine because of the way that Trump doesn't even pause. He gets up out of the cart, doesn't want to look, and just go straight for that ball. And, you know, unfortunately, this is what pisses me off about this video. I'm a little sad about this video because we don't actually get to see the shot that Trump takes. But I feel fairly confident that we can call this cheating because of the way he doesn't even bother to say, hey, you dropped the ball, or hey, that's not my ball. He just goes and approaches it and presumably he's gonna hit the ball. Let's just. You can click play. We'll go to the end of the video again. You won't see a shot. All right, so that video has been viral. Like, that is just absolutely making the rounds. I just gotta be honest. I think he cheats. And there's ample evidence to suggest that he's just a world renowned cheater at golf. Rick Riley, famed sports writer for Sports Illustrated, wrote a whole book on it. It's called Commander and Cheat How Golf Explains Trump. And this is what Rick Riley wrote in his book. I would recommend it for those who haven't read it. It's hilarious. Quote, trump doesn't just cheat at golf. He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and fuzzles and fluffs. At Wingfoot, which is a golf course where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing ball back onto the fairway, they came up with a nickname for him. Pele. That's the name of the soccer player. So Trump is, like, kind of notorious at cheating at golf. And look, I'm not going to be precious about this. Everyone kind of fudges a little bit with golf, right? Like how you get the ball, it's in the rough. You kind of want to make your lie a little bit better. Maybe you move it a touch. Like, that's not abnormal for casual golfers. I'm just going to be real about it. Like, purists aren't going to touch the ball. They don't want to do it. That makes sense. They want to keep good score. They want to be honest about it. They're not going to, like, tinker with the lie. Right. But they certainly aren't going to pretend like the ball was in the rough one. It was actually in the fescue. Right. That just doesn't happen. All right, so let's play another clip from presumably the same exact round where it looks once Again, like, Trump is just casually putting down a ball at a place where no ball was seemingly in existence so that he can just keep on playing. Let's play that clip. All right, here's Trump again. The other thing is that the. The cart. Okay, here we go. Here we go. No ball, no ball. Lean down, lean down. Move the grass. Pretend like it was there the whole time, trying to get it. Oh, there it is. I love that he moved the grass too. That's. That is like, that's the proper way to cheat. You just got pretend. I'm just getting the grass out of the way. The ball is behind the grass the whole time. He did hit that ball straight into the bunker. There is more video of that and suggestions that he cheated on the bunker shot, too. Why don't we just play that one? Because that's also right after this. You'll see. This is him getting ready. Okay, here we go. Now watch this ball going right in that bunker. Right in that bunker. Here we go. All right, there it is. And to the left. Into the bunker. All right, look, that's totally normal, people. That's a. That's a completely normal shot. Happens like you're in the rough, you're gonna hit it hard. Tough to get that chip. Those bunkers suck the balls in. He goes into the bunker. If you keep playing and you'll see he kind of messes with live the ball in the bunker. You can just watch that as I'm gonna talk over it. All right, so who cares, right? It's just golf. Like, who cares? Honestly, I don't really care that much. And if I'm being super honest about it, like, at 79, I watched the clips Trump post of himself hitting the ball. He can strike the ball. Like, he's totally good at golf. I, I legit think he is a good golfer who loves to cheat and become an even better golfer. Like, that's a good bunker shot. Regardless of the fact that he gave himself a good lie. That's a really good bunker shot. So he's good at golf. Like, he should be prideful of the fact that he could do it. He obviously is quite prideful because he posted something on his true social page, which is like a three minute montage of the shots he hit, leaving out the bunker, the one they put into the bunker. So he's good at golf, but he has an insatiable appetite to just lie about how good he is at golf. And I just want to give you, like, some of the, like, the classic Trump bits. So as of July of this year, he has claimed. He has claimed to have won five golf championships as of July. That's halfway through the year. He has claimed to have won five golf championships. This is according to the Palm Beach Post. Among them, he has claimed that he's won the member member championship at Bedminster, which is his club. That he's won the men's member guest tournamen at his Trump International West Palm Beach. That he was the Senior Club Championship at the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter. That he won the club championship at Trump International West Palm beach, not just the senior Club Championship. And then he claimed that would probably be his last and that he won the Senior Club Championship at his course outside of West Palm Beach. So, yeah, like, that's a lot of championships. Seems to be a lot of time to golf for your president, but good for him. Like, that's awesome. This is what the Palm Beach Post wrote in the same exact article, and it's so good. Trump, who never loses an event at one of his tournaments, once said he won a club championship when he didn't play the first round. He crowned himself winner of the Senior Club Championship when nobody saw him play and said he won an event at Bedminster by shooting a 67 on a course in which LIV Golf held the tournament. And of the 144 rounds, only six live golfers shot a 67 or lower. So as you can imagine, that's, like, pretty impressive stuff and good for Trump. I don't believe a second of it. But, hey, if it makes you feel good. The lie of all lies, though, is his handicap. So if you don't know handicap is your score as a golfer, it's just sort of how you are relative to the courses that you play and the expectations for how you're supposed to score on that course. So as of recently, his. And this is all posted online to the Golf Handicap Information network. It's called Gin G H I N. He had a handicap of 2.8, which is ridiculous. It's incredible. If it were true. It's not. I mean, God bless. Like, I would die for a handicap like that. Die. The closer you get to zero, the better it is. Right? Like, really, like. Like, golfers, like, in who don't play professionally would love to be in the 10 to 15 range. Honestly, the pros obviously are incredible. Trump is, like, in that, like, just below pro range here. It'd be like, you know, legit. A 2.8 handicap would make Trump one of the best golfers in the world. For someone of his age, so maybe he is, but maybe he's just moving the ball away from the fescue or having his caddy drop it or giving himself really nice lies. And look, people cheat, but that's like a whole new class of cheating. And it's pretty spectacular to watch. Certainly makes for a good viral Internet copy. All right. Hope you enjoy this video because I enjoyed it. It's fun to combine these passions. If the President happens to be watching this and if he wants to go play around, I'm always around. I would love to play. And we can make a, you know, a podcast of it or something like that. I know he did with Bryson DeChambeau, so I doubt he's going to invite me, but invitations open. Thank you. Thanks for watching. Appreciate it. Subscribe to the feed and we'll talk to you later.