Trump derangement took another fascinating turn on Friday, as “details” of President Trump’s victory over the current Trump International Golf Club champion have been leaked to the press. Who leaked the supposed details of Trump’s triumph? That would be preening, liberal sports writer Rick Reilly. Formerly of Sports Illustrated, and author of the recently released book, Commander-in-Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump. Which goes into depth on Trump’s alleged history of cheating at golf. The only problem with Reilly’s story about Trump’s championship match, is that the “facts” he uses to prove his story that Trump is a cheater and a phony, are not facts at all. But first, what is the story? It goes like this, while the President was meeting with Kim Jong Un in an effort to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach was having its annual club championship. It was won by a man named Ted Virtue. Well not long after, Trump saw Ted at the club and told him, “Congrats on winning the club championship, but you didn’t really win it because I was out of town.” Long story short, Trump challenges him to a match for the title of club champion. Trump beats Virtue (there’s a headline) but is gracious enough to offer Ted the title of Co-Club Champion. These facts are not in doubt. So what are the made-up details? Well, here’s where it gets interesting. This is Reilly’s re-telling of the story in an interview with Vox: Virtue — who wouldn’t speak to me directly, but the story was reported by Golf.com and I confirmed it through two other members of the club — was playing with his kid, who I think is 10 or 11 years old. He [Trump] sees Ted on the 9th hole and decides to drive his cart over there. He tells Ted: Congrats on winning the club championship, but you didn’t really win it because I was out of town. Ted tries to laugh it off, but Trump is dead serious. Trump says, ‘We’re going to play these last six holes for the championship.’ And Ted’s like, ‘I’m playing with my son, but thanks anyway.’ But Trump says, ‘No, your son can play too.’ So they end up playing. They get to a hole with a big pond on it. Both Ted and his son hit the ball on the green, and Trump hits his in the water. By the time they get to the hole, Trump is lining up the kid’s ball. Only now it’s his ball and the caddie has switched it. The kid’s like, ‘Daddy, that’s my ball.’ But Trump’s caddie goes, ‘No, this is the president’s ball; your ball went in the water.’ Ted and his son look at each other confused, not sure if this is really happening. And Trump’s caddie says, ‘This is the president’s ball. I don’t know what to tell you.’ Trump makes that putt, wins one up, and declares himself the club champion.’ Ok, where to start. First and foremost, EJ Willingham of Forbes Science has pointed out, that Ted Virtue’s youngest son is 25 years old. Not, 11, as Reilly indicated to Vox. Not many 25-year olds call their fathers “Daddy.” At least I hope that’s the case. Reilly eventually took to Twitter to address the issue: Looks like I messed up the age of Ted Virtue's son in the interview I gave to Vox. It's fixed now. My apologies. That story is not in my book. I was told it twice after deadline. Then https://t.co/00j1V5CNRl reported parts of it. Mr. Virtue didn't return my calls or emails. — Rick Reilly (@ReillyRick) May 10, 2019 Also, mistaking an 11-year-old for a 14-year-old, is a weird, but excusable mistake. Mistaking an 11-year-old for a 25-year-old is something no sane person could, or would do. It wouldn’t likely be a mistake two unnamed sources at Trump International would make — especially since there’s a good chance they would know or be familiar with Virtue and his son. And it wouldn’t be a mistake that a trained journalist of 30-plus years, like Rick Reilly, would make. A fact which leads us to question whether the mistake regarding the age of Virtue’s son, was really a mistake at all? The headline-grabbing quote in Reilly’s piece is when Virtue’s man-child turns to him (presumable with tear-filled eyes) and says, “Daddy, that’s my ball.” That’s a great quote. Yet, that quote doesn’t really work if Virtue’s son has a neck beard and a 401(k). So, does Reilly mean for us to believe a 25-year-old man actually uttered those words? Or, perhaps sensing he needed this story to be far more juicy in order to really sell those books, did Reilly knowingly lie about the age of Virtue’s son so he could make his “money quote” work? Moreover, since Reilly has admitted that Virtue’s son is not 11, and as such, highly unlikely to have referred to his father as “Daddy,” is Reilly prepared to disavow the quote? Or, are we headed towards a literary Dan Rather-George W. Bush scenario where the facts don’t match the claim, but we still act like the claim is true because a liberal really, really wants it to be true? ! Anyway, that isn’t the only thing that doesn’t make sense in Reilly’s story. So, Trump saw Virtue on the 9th hole and then said, “we are playing the last six holes for the championship.” What last six holes? You’re on the 9th hole – you have 10 more holes to play to complete the round. Why would Trump want to end a match on the 14th hole? That makes no sense. It’s almost as if the story is completely made up. But for the sake of argument, let’s go with it. The match ended on a hole “with a big pond.” The 14th hole does not have any water at Trump International. It’s as dry as the Sahara. If they started on 9 and played six holes then that is where the competition would end. So where is the big pond, Rick? Was it climate change? Did that “big pond” dry up in the last few months due to global warming? AOC says we only have 12 more years before the world ends due to climate change. Is this the first sign? Have you gotten your affairs in order Rick? What does Ted Virtue say happened? Virtue, as his name indicates, seems like a good guy. He hasn’t said anything. I wonder why Virtue didn’t speak to Reilly? Is it because he doesn’t want to talk to a charlatan? But Reilly says confirmed it through two other members of the club…did they see it? Did Virtue tell them? It’s a big club- who are these people? Can we get a name? You wouldn’t be so desperate to sell a book that you couldn’t be bothered to do basic journalism now would you, Rick? Both Ted and his son hit the ball on the green, and Trump hits his in the water. By the time they get to the hole, Trump is lining up the kid’s ball. Only now it’s his ball and the caddie has switched it. Did Trump morph into Mr. Burns of the Simpsons? Was Smithers his caddie? Did anybody notice his caddie sprinting toward the green? Weren’t they all in carts? Do you realize how insane this sounds? Why do you insult your reader’s intelligence Rick? At Breitbart, Reilly’s tale about sprinting caddies, non-existent ponds, and presidentially humiliated man-children, was greeted with instant skepticism. Not because of any partiality towards President Trump, but more so because Reilly’s story is literally insane. And, as of this writing, not corroborated by anyone willing to go on the record. However, Reilly did make a valiant and fatally flawed attempt at getting corroboration for hs story. After Vox’s Sean Illing asked him for the most “outrageous cheating story” he’d heard about Trump. Which is the question that led Reilly to tell the tale about Trump and the imaginary 11-year-old, Reilly says that Golf.com also reported the story about Trump cheating in his match against Virtue.<doc-sep>Have you ever won a tournament you never competed in? Have you ever stolen the ball from an opponent to gain a competitive advantage? If the answer to either or both of those questions is no, then you’re not cheating at the highest level. Which is to say, you’re not cheating like President Donald Trump. In a 2019 book, Commander in Cheat, sportswriter Rick Reilly explores Trump’s complicated relationship with the game of golf, and shows the near-heroic efforts he makes to lie about his scores, sabotage his opponents, and generally defraud the sport. Golf match? I've won 18 Club Championships including this weekend. @mcuban swings like a little girl with no power or talent. Mark's a loser — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2013 Trump’s cheating at golf might seem trivial compared to his political shenanigans, but there’s another way to think about it: Golf is a game built on self-governance, Reilly says, and in that way, it’s like a “Rorschach test for your morality.” And some of the stories about Trump are truly absurd. “In a weird way,” Reilly told me, they “say as much about Trump as almost anything else we know about him, because it cuts to the core of his character.” A lightly edited transcript of my conversation with Reilly follows. Sean Illing Trump claims to have won at least 20 club championships at his golf courses. What is a club championship? And how many of those has he actually won? Rick Reilly Once a year, every country club has a club championship for the best players. It lasts two or three days, and it’s a big thing if you win it. The best player I know of at this level won eight of these club championships — that’s the most I’ve ever heard of. Trump’s going around telling people he has won 20. But that’s 100 percent a lie. I actually played with him once, and he told me how he does it: Whenever he opens a new golf course, because he owns 14 and operates another five, he plays the first club champion by himself and declares that the club championship and puts his name on the wall. But it’s usually just him and Melania in the cart and nobody else. He just makes it up. Sean Illing Give me the most outrageous cheating story. Rick Reilly Well, this story isn’t in the book but it’s wild. While Trump was meeting with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, a club championship was held at Trump International, the course Trump built near Mar-a-Lago in Florida. So later on, Trump’s back on the course there with the Secret Service and the SWAT team guys and all that stuff. And he sees Ted Virtue, who was involved in the financing of the movie Green Book. I could never get Virtue to call me back on all this, but Golf.com reported it and I heard it from two members of the club as well. They say Virtue was there playing with his son. Trump sees Ted on the 9th hole and and decides to drive his cart over. He tells Ted: “Congrats on winning the club championship, but you didn’t really win it, because I was out of town.” Ted tries to laugh it off, but Trump is dead serious. Trump says, “We’re gonna play these last six holes for the championship.” And Ted’s like, “Oh, well, I’m playing with my son, but thanks anyway.” But Trump says, “It’s okay. Your son can play, too.” So what are you going to do? He’s the president. It’s his course. They end up playing. Apparently, they get to a hole with a big pond in front of the green. Both Ted and his son hit the ball on the green, but Trump hits his in the water. By the time they get to the hole, though, Trump is lining up the son’s ball. Only now it’s his ball and the caddie has switched it. The son is like, “That’s my ball!” But Trump’s caddie goes, “No, this is the president’s ball; your ball went in the water.” Ted and his son look at each other confused, not sure if this is really happening. Trump makes that putt, and wins one up. Then, according to Golf.com, he tells Virtue something like, “I’ll tell you what, we’ll be co-champions.” But the members tell me that when you look at the plaques on Trump’s locker there, it says: “2018 Men’s Club Champion.” No “co-” at all. Sean Illing Were you able to talk to Trump at any point while you were working on this and ask him about this stuff? Rick Reilly Nope. I tried to interview him. I sent him a FedEx letter. I called the people I know in the White House Press Office. I texted. I don’t know what else I could have done to try to get an interview. But he wouldn’t talk to me. Eric Trump, who’s in charge of the golf[-related business], wouldn’t talk to me. Don Jr. wouldn’t talk to me. I talked to a ton of people while reporting this book — Republicans, Democrats, random people in Trump’s orbit. They all have a story. But half of them wouldn’t let me use it. Some of them like his policies, some don’t want to be [targeted by Trump]. Even when I said, “Just let me use the story and I won’t put your name on it,” they still said no. Sean Illing What’s interesting to me is what Trump’s cheating says about the unreality he lives in. Rick Reilly I mean, he’s always been like this. We’ve known this guy in the sports world for 30 years. He’s always told people that no one can beat him, that he’s the best of the rich guys. But it’s always been complete bullshit, and everyone knows it. For example, he’s played in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a really popular golf tournament that’s full of rich guys, for seven straight years. His team has never made the cut — not once. He constantly says he can beat anybody among the rich, but I’ve played in the Tahoe Celebrity tournament with him several times and he’s never finished in the top half. I realize how silly all of this is, but it’s also serious because of what it says about the man, about who and what he actually is. I always say golf is like bicycle shorts — it reveals a lot about a man. And the fact that he has to prop up his bullshit reputation as this fantastic golfer is pretty revealing. Sean Illing What’s the point of all this cheating? He’s not competing for money or a pro contract, right? What purpose does any of this serve? Rick Reilly He always wins, even if he loses — that’s it. He just wants to tell people he beat your ass. I asked a psychiatrist and he said that someone with this kind of narcissism, which is really a personality disorder, they just can’t stand the idea that they’re not number one, that they’re not the best. So they have to make shit up. Someone once asked him to rate the best 10 courses in America. He put five of his courses in the top 10. But when you go to the Golf Digest Top 200, his best course is ranked 156. “This guy cheats like a mafia accountant” Sean Illing Do you think he’s convinced himself that he’s not cheating? Rick Reilly Oh, for sure. I’ve had three or four people tell me they called him on it on the first hole. He kicks the ball so much that caddies call him Pelé [a reference to the famous Brazilian soccer player]. He throws it out of bunkers, he retakes shots, he throws other people’s balls into the water. But every time people call him on it, he has the same answer, which is, “Oh, the guys I play with, you’ve got to do this just to keep it fair.” It’s the Lance Armstrong defense: Everybody’s doing it, so I have to do it just to keep up, otherwise I’m getting cheated.<doc-sep>Back in March, a story took over the Twitterverse regarding the circumstances under which Donald Trump won the 2018 course championship at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Trump did not participate in the tournament — he cited the demands of the office of the presidency — which was won by a man named Ted Virtue. Instead, after running into Virtue, Trump suggested a playoff, won, and said they were co-champions, even if the plaque at the course says POTUS won. As it turns out, Trump’s win may have came under some dubious circumstances. Rick Reilly, the author of the book Commander in Cheat, sat down with Vox’s Sean Illing to discuss his book and the president’s game on the links. When asked about a story regarding Trump cheating on the golf course, Reilly returns to the game he played against Virtue. As the longtime sportswriter tells it, Trump might have taken some liberties with which ball was his. After sending his shot sailing into the water, Trump walked up to the green and said one of the balls sitting pretty belonged to him. He didn’t claim ownership to Virtue’s ball, but instead, called dibs on the ball belonging to Virtue’s pre-teen son. You see, Trump challenged Virtue while he was playing golf with his child, who Reilly says is 10 or 11. After Virtue said he’d rather hit the links with his kid, Trump invited him to play, then allegedly stole his ball. They get to a hole with a big pond on it. Both Ted and his son hit the ball on the green, and Trump hits his in the water. By the time they get to the hole, Trump is lining up the kid’s ball. Only now it’s his ball and the caddie has switched it. The kid’s like, “Daddy, that’s my ball.” But Trump’s caddie goes, “No, this is the president’s ball; your ball went in the water.” Ted and his son look at each other confused, not sure if this is really happening. And Trump’s caddie says, “This is the president’s ball. I don’t know what to tell you.” Trump makes that putt, wins one up, and declares himself the club champion. Everyone who has ever golfed has lied a time or two, but even by that standard, this is one heck of a lie. All sense of honesty gets thrown out the window, apparently, when the opportunity to be named the 2018 Trump International Golf Club champion after the tournament had already occurred is on the line. (Via Vox)<doc-sep>
When you espy a child’s vulnerable golf ball on the green. Photo : Jeff J Mitchell ( Getty Images ) CORRECTION (May 10, 4:06 p.m. ET): Vox appended the following correction to its post this afternoon : “In an earlier version of this article, the interviewee mischaracterized the age of Ted Virtue’s son who played golf with Trump. All of Virtue’s sons are at least in their 20s, not child-age. We sincerely regret the error.” I sincerely regret it, too. It has long been known that Donald Trump cheats at golf. Not a little, either, but cheats with exactly the same degree of oafish balls-out shamelessness that he does everything else. Stories about this have circulated for a long time, to the point where they have taken on a sort of Mad Libs quality. Who can forget the time that Trump [threw/kicked/coaxed] a ball struck by [prominent sportscaster/longtime Days Of Our Lives cast member/thrice-divorced Florida chiropractor] into [a sand trap/a water hazard/a nearby alligator’s open mouth]? Try it yourself and enjoy a moment of outrage at Trump cheating egregiously so as to avoid losing a hole to David Charvet in match play. There are enough of these stories out there that semi-retired journalist Rick Reilly was able to round them up into an entire book called Commander In Cheat. In promoting that book, Reilly has avowed that he remains a non-political person who was moved to write not by Trump’s broader grotesquerie but by the offenses that the president has visited upon the noble game of golf over his decades of relentless cheesy chiseling cheating. To the extent that receipts are necessary to prove something that everyone already knows to be true, Reilly seems to have them. Many of the people that Reilly spoke to refused to attach their names to the stories they told, mostly because they understood that the current President of the United States is absolutely the sort of person who would pursue a scorched-earth campaign of retribution against anyone who insinuated that he was not, as he has often claimed, “the best golfer of all the rich people.” In an interview with Vox, Reilly tells a story about which the broad strokes have been known for some time—how Trump wheedled and bullied the financier and film producer Ted Virtue out of the club championship that Virtue had won at the Trump International Club in West Palm Beach. To recap: Virtue won the title in actual club championship play, Trump said it didn’t count because Trump himself wasn’t on the scene at the time, Trump demanded that Virtue play him for the championship and then “won” what he later magnanimously agreed to term a co-championship. The full story is much more rewarding, at least in the sense that it involves the president baldly stealing from a child. [Virtue] was playing with his kid, who I think is 10 or 11 years old. He [Trump] sees Ted on the 12th hole and decides to drive his cart over there. He tells Ted: Congrats on winning the club championship, but you didn’t really win it because I was out of town. Ted tries to laugh it off, but Trump is dead serious. Trump says, “We’re going to play these last six holes for the championship.” And Ted’s like, “I’m playing with my son, but thanks anyway.” But Trump says, “No, your son can play too.” So they end up playing. They get to a hole with a big pond on it. Both Ted and his son hit the ball on the green, and Trump hits his in the water. By the time they get to the hole, Trump is lining up the kid’s ball. Only now it’s his ball and the caddie has switched it. The kid’s like, “Daddy, that’s my ball.” But Trump’s caddie goes, “No, this is the president’s ball; your ball went in the water.” Ted and his son look at each other confused, not sure if this is really happening. And Trump’s caddie says, “This is the president’s ball. I don’t know what to tell you.” Trump makes that putt, wins one up, and declares himself the club champion.