We’ve all heard the idiom that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Even though that event was improbable, the saying has come to be used to describe someone who does useless things while ignoring serious crises around them. We know that Trump is playing golf while wildfires burn, floods rage, gas and grocery prices go up, health care becomes unaffordable, diseases that had been long eradicated due to vaccination have made a comeback, our parklands are being commercialized, and people have little faith in the government. He is more concerned about gilding the statues of long deceased war heroes than making sure our current veterans have the proper benefits and care that they deserve.
When have you heard about Trump going to the scene of natural weather devastation to comfort United States citizens? Why? Because Trump has no empathy. He cares about himself and amassing more money. Remember Trump’s visit to Puerto Rico in 2017 after the island was devastated by Hurricane Maria. When his staff had him stop at a church in San Juan to assist in distributing relief supplies, Trump threw paper towels into the crowd. He defended what he did in an interview with Mike Huckabee on a Christian network by saying this, “They had these beautiful, soft towels. Very good towels. And I came in and there was a crowd of a lot of people. And they were screaming and they were loving everything. I was having fun, they were having fun. They said, ‘Throw’em to me! Throw’em to me, Mr. President.’” However, according to media accounts, Carmen Yulin Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, criticized what she said was the slow federal response, called Trump’s visit to the island “insulting,” said Trump lacked “common courtesy,” and called him the “miscommunicator-in-chief.” She added, “He minimized our suffering by saying that Katrina was a real disaster.”
Trump started the war in Iran and even after U.S. service members were killed and injured in retaliatory strikes, Trump was spotted visiting his golf properties in Florida and other locations. According to the Donald Trump Golf Tracker, an independent public schedule monitor, Trump golfed 4 out of 5 weekends in May, 3 out of 4 weekends in June, every weekend in July, and on the first Saturday in August in 2026. Trump has golfed 125 days out of 561 days (8/04/2026) or 22 percent of his time in office since the people re-elected him and returned him to the White House.
He had the time to play golf, but not to visit any natural disaster scenes during May, June, or July 2026. During these months, Louisiana, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, the Ohio Valley, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, and Texas, by media accounts, have been hit by either severe storms and tornadoes, wildfires, Tropical Storm Arthur, heavy rains and flooding, or flash floods. These natural disasters don’t even include the severe heat and the wildfire smoke from Canada impacting many states.
A recent PBS article states, “Trump has taken longer on average to approve disaster requests than any other President, according to an Associated Press analysis of data dating back to 1989, when a federal law setting new parameters for disaster determinations was implemented. And no other president has such a disparity in denials between states that supported him politically and those that did not.”
The President played golf but had few comforting words for the suffering American citizens. The President appears to be a man without empathy or compassion for the people he is supposed to be serving. In addition, Trump’s comments about playing golf only add to his plethora of lies. In 2016, while on the campaign trail, Trump stated multiple times that he would be too busy working for the American people to leave the White House. In fact, he mocked former President Barack Obama multiple times for playing golf amid difficulties in the United States. After attacking Obama for playing golf, using Air Force One to campaign, and heading out of Washington at taxpayer expense, Trump did all three only a month into the job after his election in 2016, and he continues to do so in his second term.
Mr. President, the American people continue to suffer while you play golf. Stop abdicating your responsibilities. Americans need a leader, not a golfer.
