Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Commander in Cheat

I couldn't put this book down. Amazon delivered it yesterday afternoon and I spent all evening at my local watering hole devouring this book. I've never picked up a golf club or been a fan of Donald Trump but I've read books on both topics and this book takes the cake. Rick Reilly uses golf's Trump techniques (cheating and lying) to explain his terrible practices in office. Trump has been a notorious cheater in golf for decades, something he can't argue against; it's on film, hundreds of athletes, celebrities, and politicians will attest to it, he's admitted it, and his caddies joke that "Trump doesn't cheat... because we do it for him." Trump boasts that he's won 18 golf tournaments, although not ONE can be verified (16 are easy to disprove). He usually bullies course managers to put his name up on the trophy plaques because he "plays better than most other players all the time (most tournaments he never even played in!). Reilly then elaborates on Trump's business practices: specifically with his golf courses (lawsuits galore), his fight against paying contractors in full, and his failure to ban any Muslim countries that he had golf interests in. The book also discusses all presidents and their attachment (or lack thereof) to golf and how it influenced their presidential terms. "Obama wound up playing 306 rounds in office, or once every 9.5 days. Trump is on pace to, over eight years, to obliterate Obama's number - 759 rounds, which goes to show you that bone spurs do heal very nicely." The humor, the insight, the golfing parallels, and the writing make this book a showstopper. It was eye opening and golf was the perfect lens to view Trump and his "ethics" through. "In life, we're defined by the obstacles we overcome. That's the stuff we hang on our inner wall. But if you cheat to get around those obstacles, you never know the thrill of actually beating them. It's like buying a trophy in a pawn shop. You can shine it up and show it off and pretend you won it, but when you get close to it, it only reflects the face of a loser." make this book your most read political/sports book of 2019!

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