Joe Biden clapped back at Donald Trump after Trump posted a typically bizarre boast about his self-proclaimed golfing prowess.
“Congratulations, Donald,” the president told his Republican rival. “Quite the accomplishment.”
Sarcasm is hard to type but it surely suffused Biden’s words, which were posted to the platform formerly known as Twitter as part of what appears to be a broader strategy from the Biden campaign of taunting and ridiculing Trump over his legal and financial problems.
Trump made his typically capitals-splattered boast about a supposed great golfing victory on Truth Social, the platform he started when Twitter banned him for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress.
“It is my great honour,” the former president wrote, “to be at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach tonight, AWARDS NIGHT, to receive THE CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY & THE SENIOR CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY. I WON BOTH!
“A large and golfing talented membership, a GREAT and difficult course, made the play very exciting. The qualifying and match play was amazing … Very exciting, thank you!!!”
Biden’s tweet followed. Many other social media users quoted Rick Reilly, a former Sports Illustrated columnist and author of Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.
Reilly, who has played with the former president, has described how Trump “cheats like a mafia accountant”, including “kick[ing] the ball out of the rough so many times, the caddies call him Pele”, taking endless free shots and falsifying scores.
On Sunday, Reilly told Trump: “Call us if you ever win one on a course you DON’T own and operate.”
Trump’s dubious claims to honours and titles at his own courses are well documented. Notably, his West Palm Beach club was revealed in 2017 to list him as its 1999 champion. It opened in 2000.
Away from the fairways, Trump secured the Republican nomination to face Biden again this year despite facing 88 criminal charges, multimillion-dollar civil penalties and attempts to remove him from the ballot.
On Monday, Trump faces a hearing in his New York criminal case over hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels – who he met at a celebrity golf event in Nevada – and a deadline to pay a $454m bond in a civil fraud suit, also in New York.
Golf courses are among Trump assets the Democratic attorney general of New York, Letitia James, could try to seize if Trump does not pay up.
Biden’s campaign has seized on Trump’s financial troubles, taunting him as “Broke Don”. The weekend saw a social media surge for the nickname “Don Poorleone”, a play on Trump’s mob-like approach to politics and Don Corleone, the name of the mafia boss played by Marlon Brando in the Godfather saga.
On Monday, meanwhile, Edward-Isaac Dovere, author of Battle for the Soul, a book on Biden’s victory in 2020, noted an interesting point.
So far in the 2024 campaign, Dovere wrote, Trump “has taken more time for golf tournaments than campaign events. Last night, Trump bragged about winning at golf – while still no campaign events booked.”
Most users, however, focused on mocking Trump’s golf-based braggadocio, many raising amusing parallels with another former world leader.
“According to North Korean media Kim Jong Il scored 11 holes-in-one on his very first round of golf,” said Gideon Rachman, author of The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World.
“So Trump has a way to go.”
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