Donald Trump spends nearly every moment of his free time doing one of three things—watching cable news; tweeting about his growing list of failures, trying to pin the blame on someone, anyone other than the man in the Oval Office; and last, but not least, golf. In fact, in only the first six months of office, Trump has taken 38 different golf outings, every single one of them to Trump-owned properties.
The closest Trump-owned golf course is roughly 30 miles from the White House, located in Potomac Falls, Virginia. The Coast Guard, in conjunction with the Secret Service, now plan to close a two-mile stretch of the Potomac River near Trump’s golf course whenever Donald Trump or other undisclosed “high ranking government officials” are golfing. This particular segment of the Potomac River is extremely popular with families, Olympic hopefuls and veterans who train and recover on the river. From the Washington Post:
“It’s just heartbreaking,” said John Deitle, 41, a former Marine who served a combined five tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and receives treatment at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for lung problems he says are related to chemical exposure.
Deitle paddles on this stretch of the Potomac with Team River Runner, a nonprofit that helps wounded veterans. On Sunday afternoon, he stood in a life vest at his put-in point on Seneca Creek, a faded tattoo saying “Teufel Hunden” — “Devil Dog,” a Marine nickname — showing on one of his bare upper arms.
“Granted, it’s his golf course,” Deitle said. “But he has other golf courses.”
Olympic hopefuls are blocked as well:
The sweeping new security measures proposed near Trump National seem to have come as a particular blow to the tightly knit clan of paddlers on this half-mile-wide section of the Potomac, which courses slowly past shores shaded by sycamore and black walnut before turning into light rapids.
“It’s a sharing culture out here, and it feels strange to have somebody not sharing,” said Ashley Nee, a kayaker who competed for Team USA at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and is training for 2020 on the affected stretch of river.
Virginia residents shouldn’t fret. Mar-a-Lago renovations will surely be completed soon and he’ll be back to spending millions of taxpayer dollars each weekend to head back down to his favorite Florida hideaway.