Norms Impact
The Trump Golf Tracker shows that he’s spent 17% of his presidency golfing so far
A presidency is being publicly tallied in golf days and grocery costs, spotlighting a widening gap between campaign promises and the basic norm of sustained executive attention.
Feb 17, 2025
Sources
Summary
A viral “Trump Golf Tracker” reports that Donald Trump has spent five of his first 28 days of his second term golfing, about 17.86%. The presidency is being operationally framed through personal time allocation and public-cost-of-living metrics rather than formal governance outputs. The practical consequence is a measurable gap between campaign promises on prices and visible presidential attention in the opening month of the term.
Reality Check
Normalizing a presidency where the public must track leisure time against rising living costs corrodes our expectation of continuous, accountable executive governance. The described conduct is unlikely to be criminal on these facts alone; nothing here establishes fraud, bribery, or misuse of appropriated funds under core federal criminal statutes. But it still weakens democratic stability by converting presidential performance into a spectacle metric while material promises—like bringing down egg prices—go unmet in the opening month. When attention itself becomes optional, our rights and institutions become dependent on a leader’s personal schedule rather than the nation’s needs.
Detail
<p>A website called Trump Golf Tracker circulated widely on social media and reports the President’s time spent golfing during the first 28 days of his second term, beginning January 20.</p><p>Using publicly available information, the tracker states that Donald Trump spent five out of 28 days golfing, calculated as 17.86% of that period. It also reports that during his first term Trump visited a Trump Organization property on 428 of 1,461 days and is estimated to have played 261 rounds of golf, described as one every 5.6 days.</p><p>The tracker is described as powered by The Alt Media, a Substack-hosted publication created by Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Youngman.</p><p>The site also displays graphs for egg prices and gasoline prices, showing increases over the prior two months. It lists eggs at $7.74 per dozen and gasoline at $3.13 per gallon, and notes that egg price increases have been linked to an ongoing bird flu and that Trump campaigned on lowering egg prices.</p>