Reason #15: Cheating
Why do we need to defeat Donald Trump and ensure that a Democrat occupies the White House?
Today’s post may seem frivolous, but please bear with me. Cheating is a bit different from lying. It involves not just saying something that is untrue but involves taking direct action to gain an unfair advantage, for example during a game or an examination. (More about examinations in a future post.) From this perspective, it often also involves taking something away from another i.e. stealing.
During the 2024 presidential debate, Trump and Biden briefly sparred over – of all things – golf. Each boasted that they would defeat the other. What on earth does golf have to do with political competence? It turns out that a surprising number of presidents have been avid golfers, including Woodrow Wilson, Dwight Eisenhauer, Tricky Dick Nixon, Ronald Regan, Dubya Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Furthermore, most of them had handicaps that many weekend golfers would envy. Trump for example has claimed a handicap of a fraction above two while Biden has variously spoken of a handicap of six or eight.
Handicaps are based upon average, accumulated scores claimed by golfers during eighteen holes of golf. These scores i.e. number of strokes during a match, are governed by a fiendishly complicated set of rules that govern what a golfer can do with the lie of his ball and include penalty strokes, assessed when a ball goes into water or out of bounds. I used the word “claimed” because unlike baseball or football, where umpires watch closely, apply the rules rigorously and assign scores, in golf it is the individual golfer who writes down his own final score on a score card. In Rick Reily’s words, “it is a game of self-governance. “a “Rorschach test for your morality”. This system offers an opportunity for the dishonest individual to falsely claim a better (lower) score by surreptitiously improving the lie of his ball, failing to assess penalty strokes and just plain old lying about the number of strokes he has taken on a given hole. If a pro golfer makes even a single mistake in reporting his score he is disqualified.
With this rudimentary background in mind, how can it be determined whether an individual, Donald Trump for example, has cheated on a round of golf and falsely turned in a winning score? The biggest obstacle to cheating is a caddie, who might report the cheating but since the caddie’s income is dependent on the golfer’s generosity, this source of verification is problematic. What do caddies have to say about Donald Trump? At one of the courses he played, his nickname was “Pele” for his propensity and skill in kicking the ball to a more favorable lie.
Another golf metric is the number of tournament championships a golfer has won. Donald Trump claims that he has won more than twenty club championships, typically on golf courses that he owns. Reporters have pointed out that in some cases, during the first year he owns a club, he was the only participant. In other instances, he has not played in the public tournament, instead entering a score from a game he played at an earlier time.
There are also reports of even more gratuitous offenses, for example, kicking an opponent’s ball off a green or playing another golfer’s ball after his own had gone into water.
I was not able to find any comparable reports of golfing irregularities on the part of Joe Biden. When he last played a round at his club six years ago, his handicap was 6.7.
What does this tell us? The pattern is clear, Donald Trump is pathologically competitive and is ready and willing to employ any method to gain his ends, specifically including lying and cheating to gain an advantage over his opponent. Cheaters not only misinform, they unfairly take a deserved win from others. This might seem trivial or petty, for an obese 78-year-old to claim he shot a 67 on a challenging course, until the spoiled brat golf cheat in question grows up and turns in a false score card claiming that he won a presidential election, triggering a violent insurrection.
For more information, on this topic.
Tom D’Angelo of Trump’s hometown Palm Beach Post wrote an article on the subject. .
Rick Reily has written an entire book on this topic entitled, “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.”
“He cheats like a Mafia accountant.”
Have a heart; use your mind, search your conscience, and vote for Democratic candidates – across the ballot – on November. 5th.
Please share this message with your friends and please, add your thoughts, to expand upon what are only brief sketches here.
Fred Grannis
July 30, 2024