Commander in Cheat

Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump by Rick Reilly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Our current Commander in Chief, Donald Trump has a well-known passion for golf. He has gone golfing 183 times since his inauguration (according to trumpgolfcount.com/). Rick Reilly, award winning sports writer, is not particularly political. (I used to read his column in Sports Illustrated. The angriest I ever got with him was when he wrote about how much better football is than baseball.) But he is also a huge golf fan. And this is where he takes issue with Trump, and what has inspired the writing of this book.

For you see, Donald Trump has a terrible reputation for cheating at golf. Little things like taking “gimmes” on putts that are well over 3 feet , moving balls from unplayable lies to a more playable spot near the green, and the famous “Trump Bump” where he inflates (actually, deflates) his score to make himself look better and thus feel better are all tools in a massive cheating arsenal. I’m no golfer, but the methods that he reportedly uses to make him a winner every time are numerous and shocking.

Oh, I know where some of you are thinking. Some of you are saying “so what?” and some are saying “fake news.” Well. So be it. At this point you believe what you believe and nothing is going to change that.

The book is well sourced and lots of caddies and important people go on the record to paint the picture and support the argument that Donald Trump is a huge golf cheat. But Reilly digs deeper and examines the impact that golf has on his presidency. As Trump has refused to completely divest from his business interests during his term, there are numerous ways that are detailed in the book in how Trump is using the office to continue to rake in money at his resorts. And the game that he plays and the scores that he boasts (and he does love to boast!) are often fraudulent due to the massive cheating which Reilly details.

It’s a breezy book which I enjoyed bigly and tremendously. I read most of this between innings over the course of a week of watching baseball. The impassioned last chapter gets to the depth of how much Reilly loves the sport and how he believes Trump has been ruining it through class warfare. I can see why he found it necessary to tell this story. Great read.




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