It’s Day 196 of the war with Iran. Twenty-nine people have been executed in connection with anti-war protests. And the President of the United States is at a golf tournament in Doonbeg, Ireland — at a course he owns, the one that paid him $20 million last year. Five cargo planes full of armored Secret Service vehicles flew across the Atlantic so the man who started a war could sit in a hospitality tent and watch the Irish Open. Ireland footed a €20 million security bill for the visit. The Secret Service is booking rooms at his hotel, buying food at his club, and sending the tab to American taxpayers. The grift isn’t hidden. It’s the itinerary.
While he was there, he told reporters a united Ireland was inevitable and “may as well happen now.” Redrawing a century of contested borders from a lounge chair at his own resort in County Clare, with thousands marching through Dublin to tell him to leave. The British government issued a formal rebuke. Unionist parties in Northern Ireland went ballistic. He called it “pretty cool.” This is the same president currently running a war he can’t explain in a country he couldn’t find without staff, casually offering to rearrange someone else’s island between holes.
Day 196. Five cargo planes. A €20 million security bill. And a man who profits from every room the Secret Service books, watching other people play golf while the war he started grinds into its seventh month. The presidency is a golf trip that bills you for the cart.