President Donald Trump has failed to provide any sort of substantive leadership for the United States following a pair of mass shootings last weekend that left some 31 people dead. Now, he’s going golfing. On Friday, he’s leaving for an annual ten day vacation to the golf resort branded with his own name in Bedminster, New Jersey, where although Trump has made a show of calling undertakings like this a “working vacation” before, considering precedent he will no doubt be alternating most of his time between the golf course and Fox News and Twitter. The Associated Press notes that “aides say his attention will be focused on golf, cable news and Twitter” — and before he even kicks that off, he’ll apparently be participating in two high-dollar fundraisers in the Hamptons expected to garner some $10 million for the 2020 Republican machine. Again, this is all proceeding while Americans still actively mourn the casualties of yet another round of mass shootings.
The behavior along these lines isn’t starting now by a longshot. Hours after news first circulated of the El Paso attack last weekend that left 22 people dead at the hands of a white nationalist using the exact same rhetoric Trump has, the president was photographed happily crashing a wedding at his Bedminster property.
When he visited El Paso and Dayton, where 9 people were killed, what could have been moments for the president to lead the nation in moments of unity quickly turned into yet another opportunity for Trump to shout harsh political antagonism. Asked at the White House before he left whether he had regret for sounding an alarm about a supposed immigrant “invasion” — the same term that the El Paso shooter used for the same concept in a manifesto — Trump essentially indicated that he did not, launching into a screed about how dangerous undocumented immigration supposedly really is.
While in El Paso, he was filmed while literally walking through the medical center where victims were being treated going on about how great his crowd size was at a rally he held in the city earlier this year compared to the turnout at a counter-rally held by “crazy” Beto O’Rourke. He was going on like this while literally in the medical facility!
In other words, Trump dismissing concerns of those grieving the dead is not new with his departure from D.C. for Bedminster this weekend. After visiting Dayton, he took to Twitter to complain about Mayor Nan Whaley and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), claiming that they misrepresented his time in the medical facility there and actually, he was well-received — as if that matters at all by any stretch of the imagination to the actual substance of the gun violence issues at hand!
Outside of this context, Trump has already spent about one-fourth of his presidency at a golf property branded with his own name, and overall, he’s spent about one-third at all types of properties branded with his own name. So far before this vacation, he’s spent about 80 days at his Bedminster property, which works out to about 8 percent of his time in office so far.
Featured Image via screenshot
