Donald Trump has a fuzzy but frequent relationship with golf. He’s considered, for example, the club champion of the course he owns despite not actually playing in said championship. And yet, he frequently plays and it appears to be the only actual physical activity he puts his 72-year-old body through.
Trump’s golf stories fall in line with the other things that he says and says he does, as in he often lies about both. The story of him challenging his club’s champion to a golf contest that somehow made him co-champion is a good example of that. But even further, there’s an entire book you probably don’t want to read about how Trump cheats at golf.
That book, written by Rick Reilly and coming out later this year, features all kinds of stories about Trump on the golf course. Which makes sense because, well, he’s there a lot. Even as president. The book contains many anecdotes about Trump, but the title — Commander-in-Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump — is pretty self-explanatory.
Reilly’s except was published in Politico on Thursday and included a moment when Trump angrilly slammed a club down, which bounced back up and hit him in the face. You’ll never guess who he blamed for this incident.
“One time, after a bad drive, Trump slammed his driver back in his bag, as guys will do, and wasn’t really watching what he was doing, and the driver ricocheted back and hit Trump in the head. ‘A.J.?’ Trump asked, pissed. ‘Did you just hit me in the head with my own driver?’
‘Sir, Mr. Trump, why would I do that?’ A.J. said. ‘You’re my president!’
There was also a moment discussed in which this same caddy literally fought someone for saying something bad about the 45th president.
“He was running his mouth, sir,” says A.J., who calls everybody “sir” or “ma’am.” “Yellin’ about Mr. Trump. He was sayin’ to somebody, ‘Don’t tell me how I have to feel about him! I hate that motherf—–!’”
A.J. says he came up on Sully from behind and put him in a full military chokehold, yelling, “Now, you listen to me, f—–! You’re not gonna come to Mr. Trump’s course and eat Mr. Trump’s food and then use the word ‘hate’ about my president. I won’t have it, you got me?”
Given his loyalty to Trump, it seems unlikely that A.J. actually hit him in the head with his driver. Also because, uh, Trump hit himself in the face with his own driver and blamed someone else.
A.J.’s loyalty to Trump is explained pretty strongly in the piece, so it’s pretty easy to believe his story here.
There were protesters by the entrance every day that week, and A.J. always made sure to drive his car right by them. “There’d be a bunch a women out front with all their stupid signs, sir. So I go real slow by ’em, see, hit the window button—zzzzzzttt—toss ’em the bird and I yell, ‘F— you!’ They’d start yelling at me and I’m like—zzzztttt—right back up. And I laughed, sir.”
Just another normal day in America, one of the many countries on planet Earth.