Trump defends weekend of golf while Hurricane Dorian approached and Poland remembered Nazi invasion
President Trump lashed out at Sadiq Khan Tuesday after London’s mayor criticized him for golfing over the weekend as Hurricane Dorian edged closer to the coast of Florida.
“The incompetent Mayor of London, Sadique Kahn [sic], was bothered that I played a very fast round of golf yesterday,” said Trump in a tweet that, before being corrected, misspelled Khan’s first and last names. “Many Pols exercise for hours, or travel for weeks. Me, I run through one of my courses (very inexpensive). President Obama would fly to Hawaii.”
Khan, who attended a ceremony in Poland over the weekend commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland that began World War II, chided the president for skipping the event in favor of golfing at his private club in Virginia.
“He’s clearly busy dealing with a hurricane out on the golf course,” Khan told Politico on Monday, adding that Trump “is a guy who amplifies racist tweets; amplifies the tweets of fascists; says things that are deeply objectionable. If I don’t stand up and call that out I think I’m doing a disservice to Londoners who chose me as their mayor.”
Trump has often criticized Khan, the first Muslim elected mayor of London, and routinely resorts to ad hominem attacks on those who find fault with him.
“Khan should focus on ‘knife crime,’ which is totally out of control in London. People are afraid to even walk the streets,” Trump wrote Tuesday. “He is a terrible mayor who should stay out of our business!”
Over the holiday weekend, the president played multiple rounds of golf at one of his properties in Virginia, where White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said he received “hourly updates.”
Trump’s golf trips have cost taxpayers over $100 million through the first two and a half years of his term, as he’s spent 227 days at one of his golf clubs as president. Former President Barack Obama did usually spend his Christmas vacations in his home state of Hawaii but did not fly there just to golf.
In August, the president canceled a visit to Denmark because the country’s prime minister was not open to the idea of selling Greenland to the United States. His cancellation of the trip to Poland drew little initial criticism until it was learned that he spent the weekend golfing.
“To ensure that all resources of the federal government are focused on the arriving storm, I have decided to send our vice president, Mike Pence, to Poland this weekend in my place,” Trump said last week. “It’s something very important for me to be here. The storm looks like it could be a very, very big one indeed.”
On Sunday, Trump was asked if he had any message for Poland on the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion.
“I just want to congratulate Poland,” Trump replied, adding, “It’s a great country with great people.”
Trump has feuded with Khan since June 2017, when he misunderstood one of the mayor’s tweets following a terror attack in the British capital.
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