Golf has a long history in the White House — but for Trump, it's more than a pastime

For much of the last century golf has never been that far from the White House That certainly remains true these days as Donald Trump is an operational golfer playing regularly on weekends at Mar-a-Lago People are noticing As Seth Meyers joked in recent weeks According to new analysis by the Washington Post President Trump has spent one-third of his days in office at his golf courses And I think we might be better off if we could somehow get that up to three-thirds For Trump golf is not just about relaxation it s part of his mindset When questioned about the appearance of accepting a million Qatari plane as a gift Trump cited the golfer Sam Snead in response According to Trump Snead s motto was When they give you a putt you say Thank you very much You pick up your ball and you walk to the next hole Trump also likes to get business done on the golf program In a latest interview with the Atlantic Witkoff described how he learned from Senator Lindsey Graham how Trump uses his golf days According to Graham You have breakfast and it goes as long as Trump wants it to go Then you play golf and then you have lunch During these sessions you talk about all these things Witkoff absorbed Graham s teachings and used his golf and meals time with Trump and Graham to explore accomplishable administration roles with Witkoff concluding I think I m the guy maybe Mideast envoy Trump s mixing golf and work differs from several of his predecessors who thought it was key to have separation between their official duties and their time on the links William Howard Taft loved the championship but his predecessor Teddy Roosevelt warned Taft against being photographed in his golf duds as it might cause Americans to think he was not taking his work seriously As Roosevelt who was himself partial to tennis warned I never let friends advertise my tennis and never let a photograph of me in tennis costume appear TRUMP WINS GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP A DAY AFTER ORDERING STRIKES ON IRAN-BACKED HOUTHIS IN YEMENTaft s successor Woodrow Wilson played golf times as president He even played in the snow using red-painted balls for easy ball spotting Unlike Trump though Wilson did not like talking business while golfing so he usually played with his personal physician Cary Grayson who had recommended that Wilson take up the encounter Although Wilson tried to avoid work on the links sometimes pressing matters interceded After the poll Wilson learned on the golf discipline that he had won California and would secure a second term as president In contrast to Roosevelt s concerns Wilson received praise for his regular playing In July of Cleveland Moffett wrote in McClure s And how inspiring at present is the example of Woodrow Wilson who regards regular physical exercise as a sacred duty not to be interfered with nor neglected Rain or shine whatever the pressure of events the President of the United States takes his exercise The thin-skinned Warren Harding was less fortunate He did not like that comedian Will Rogers used to make fun of Harding for a host of things including golf Once when Harding learned that Rogers planned to mock Harding s golf contest at a show Harding planned to attend Harding refused to go BRYSON DECHAMBEAU HITS GOLF BALLS ON WHITE HOUSE SOUTH LAWN DURING VISIT WITH TRUMPDwight Eisenhower was also subjected to multiple jokes about his golfing One of the best ones was the bumper sticker that read BEN HOGAN FOR PRESIDENT IF WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A GOLFER LET'S HAVE A GOOD ONE Another joke that made the rounds was that Eisenhower invented the -hole work week It was not far off Ike played about rounds as president which averaged out to about two -hole rounds a week Ike was unperturbed by the criticism He had putting greens installed at both the White House and at Camp David He also had a regular foursome known as The Gang or The Augusta Gang including Coca-Cola Chairman Robert Woodruff Frankfort Distilleries President Elles Slater and W Alton Pete Jones president of Cities Amenity Company now known as CITGO But Ike didn t want to do business when he was golfing In fact he praised The Gang in his memoir as men who already effective made no attempt to profit by our association When Eisenhower s Vice President Richard Nixon became president he occasionally played with celebrities including Jackie Gleason Jimmy Stewart Bob Hope and Fred MacMurray He even played with Snead who accused Nixon of throwing a ball out of the rough and onto the fairway Still Nixon s general awkwardness inspired this joke about National Guard Adviser Henry Kissinger seeing the president in athletic clothes and asking how it went I shot a this day Nixon noted Your golf match is getting better Kissinger replied only to hear back I was bowling Henry While funny the joke was unfair Nixon was a solid golfer who once broke while in retirement Still Nixon looked down on those who played too much Once when demanded about Vice President Spiro Agnew Nixon was dismissive saying By any criteria he falls short Potential He doesn t work hard he likes to play golf Like Nixon Ronald Reagan enjoyed the event and often played with celebrities including Walter Annenberg and Warren Buffett But Reagan largely stopped playing golf after an October weekend that exhibited the difficulties of playing golf and being president Reagan was on a golf visit to Augusta with Secretary of State George Shultz New Jersey Senator Nicholas Brady and Treasury Secretary Donald Regan On Saturday morning he had been awakened to hear developments regarding the new communist coup in Grenada Reagan and his company planned an invasion to liberate Grenada but went ahead with their tournament so as not to signal that anything was afoot At that challenge National Defense Adviser Bud McFarlane kept interrupting to give updates on the unfolding situation To make matters worse the battle was also interrupted by an armed man who crashed through the gates and took hostages at the clubhouse demanding to speak to the president Reagan called the clubhouse via radio phone but ultimately did not speak to the man who was eventually arrested That night Reagan was awakened again with worse news Hezbollah terrorists bombed the Marine headquarters in Beirut killing U S personnel Reagan returned to Washington without playing his scheduled Sunday challenge As a upshot of the disastrous weekend he decided to curtail his golf saying Playing golf is not worth the chance that someone could get killed George H W Bush also had to address the question of how to manage golf and presidential business Bush had high standards for golf and longed to play with people who could keep up both in skill and with what he called speed golf completing entire rounds in two hours Bush s biggest golfing challenge as president came after Iraq s invasion of Kuwait in August of He promptly tired of the media shouting Iraq-related questions at him while he played When reporters peppered him with questions on the first tee at a event that August he uncharacteristically snapped saying I talk to them every morning at and I m not going to take any more comments up here though He later denied getting testy saying I ve never been mad at you I just don t like taking questions on serious matters on my vacation PRESIDENT TRUMP'S GOLF COURSES WHERE THEY ARE HOW YOU CAN PLAYUnlike Bush Bill Clinton saw the golf program as a good place to conduct business While still in Arkansas he would try to raise campaign funds from golfing companions As president he played regularly with Democratic fixer and corporate board staple Vernon Jordan Jordan would invite prominent business executives like GE s Jack Welch Warren Buffett and Microsoft s Bill Gates despite the fact that Clinton s Justice Department was studying Gates company In the championship with Gates Clinton took a mulligan at the outset something for which he became well known Clinton s successor George W Bush had seen the challenge of managing golf and the presidency firsthand He was playing with his father on the day that the elder Bush announced he would no longer take serious questions on the golf syllabus Bush supported his dad in his typically humorous way telling one chatty reporter Could you wait until we finish hitting at least My event is really bad But when you re talking in the back swing it gets even worse After W became president he got selected pushback from the press for his golf habit In August of Bush was about to tee off in an early morning battle when he was petitioned by a reporter about a horrific terrorist bus bombing in Israel Bush responded We must stop the terror I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers Thank you Now watch this drive The video of this unfortunate clip was shown multiple times on television and was featured in Michael Moore s anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit According to presidential golf expert Don Van Natta that will go down in presidential golf histories maybe one of the worst moments of all time Bush stopped playing golf in during the second Iraq war In he revealed his reasons for doing so in an interview with Mike Allen then of POLITICO I don't want particular mom whose son may have not long ago died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf I feel I owe it to the families to be as you know to be in solidarity as best as I can with them And I think you know playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal Barack Obama played golf more than times as president and he like Trump liked to do business on the discipline Like Clinton he played with Vernon Jordan in high-profile foursomes which included Clinton Tiger Woods basketball star Ray Allen former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg He also played with particular top CEOs including former UBS CEO and Obama benefit event Robert Wolf Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and Obama donor and Silver Lake Co-CEO Glen Hutchins He also tried to bond with Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner on the links According to Boehner s memoir they kept their conversations to golf while on the program but engaged in debt ceiling discussions in the clubhouse agreeing to proceed with behind-the-scenes negotiations PGA TOUR S ADAM SCOTT SHARES MESSAGE TO TRUMP AFTER WHITE HOUSE MEETINGPlaying with Boehner helped push forward budget talks but it also raised chosen hackles on Obama s side of the aisle Cultural critic Elayne Rapping reported of the once cool Obama Now he s playing golf with John Boehner which is about the preponderance uncool thing there is Senate Democrats seemed annoyed as well When one of them petitioned his Democratic colleagues if any of them had ever played golf with the president not one raised his hand In another Obama challenge with a Republican lawmaker Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss scored a hole-in-one prompting him to quip I advised him since I made the hole-in-one he ought to give us everything we want on entitlement revision CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONObama and Trump both played a lot of golf but Trump likes to talk about the meeting more than any of his predecessors In one meeting with CEOs Trump goaded GE s Jeffrey Immelt into telling the story of a contest in which the president hit a hole in one According to Immelt Trump had noted You realize of discipline that I m the richest golfer in the world Trump then corrected Immelt slightly I veritably reported I was the best golfer of all the rich people to be exact and then I got a hole in one In his first term Trump had a golf simulator installed in the White House that would allow him to play the world s largest part famous golf courses virtually When Joe Biden a solid golfer in his younger years moved into the White House in he did not think much of Trump s golf set up saying What a f ing a hole Even though Biden did not play that much while in the White House he maintained that he could have beaten Trump on the links and needled his rival for being less than honest about his golf result saying in And where's Trump been Riding around in his golf cart filling out his scorecard before he hits the ball The rivalry was so heated that proposes of who had the superior match authentically came up in their one and only debate in June of Biden claimed that I got my handicap when I was vice president down to six but Trump was dubious saying I ve seen your swing I know your swing Golf even played a role in the tight electoral process of Multiple reports suggested that Trump neglected his debate prep in favor of more playing time Trump was also communicated by his son-in-law Jared Kushner that he had lost Pennsylvania while gearing up to tee off at the seventh hole in a November tournament Even though this news doomed his reelection prospects Trump chose to enjoy the rest of his meeting finishing the last holes before heading home It's a safe bet to expect that Trump will keep doing business on the links throughout the rest of his term Yet while the frequency of his playing is in line with a number of his predecessors his obsession with golf and his bringing of the contest into the way he approaches his presidency surpasses them all