While Donald Trump was visiting Europe, he took some time to relax by playing golf at one of his courses in Scotland. He’s a big fan of the sport and often plays during his trips.
But during this particular outing, something unusual was caught on camera. A surveillance video from inside a nearby building showed Trump riding a golf cart on the edge of the fairway at Turnberry, one of his courses. There was a sand trap in front of him and some tall grass off to the side.
As Trump sat in the cart, two caddies walked by. One of them suddenly bent down and placed a golf ball on the ground in front of where Trump was going to play — something that’s not normally allowed in a proper golf game.
Trump then stepped out of the cart with a club in hand and walked over to the ball as if he was about to take a shot. The video cuts off before we see him hit it, but the footage quickly spread across social media.
Many people online called him out, saying he was cheating. Some joked about it, with one person saying, “Who needs a foot wedge when you’ve got someone dropping the ball for you?” Another joked that Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would make the perfect team because of how wild their golf stories are.
A professional golfer even chimed in, sarcastically calling Trump the “Commander-in-Cheat,” playing on his former job title.
This isn’t the first time Trump has been accused of bending the rules on the golf course. Earlier this year, actor Samuel L. Jackson said Trump cheated when they played a round together. When asked who was the better player, Jackson confidently said it was him — and added that he doesn’t cheat. Trump later denied ever playing with Jackson at all.
Back in 2016, another actor, Anthony Anderson, also said Trump cheated during a game they played together. He claimed he watched it happen more than once. In one story, he said both of them hit bad shots. Anderson couldn’t find his ball, but somehow Trump’s ball magically showed up in perfect position on the fairway. Anderson didn’t say Trump moved it himself, but he hinted that someone else did it for him.
Sports journalist Rick Reilly wrote in 2019 that Trump often took extra shots or took credit for shots other people made. He said caddies nicknamed Trump “Pele,” like the famous soccer player, because he would kick the ball around the course so much to get better lies.
Reilly summed it up by saying that calling Trump a golf cheater is like calling Michael Phelps a swimmer — it’s not just true, it defines how he plays. According to him, Trump cheats no matter who he’s playing with, whether it’s a regular person or a professional like Tiger Woods.
