"ON BULLSHIT"

Donald Trump announced that, over the weekend, he won the Senior Club Championship at Bedminster, a contest for golfers over 50. He said that he shot a round of 67 and dared anyone to claim otherwise since “many people watch, plus I am surrounded by Secret Service.”

This is the second club championship that Trump has won this year alone. Back in January, he took took to the Internet to note that he had won the senior club championship at Trump International Doral, his course in Florida.

It’s at least Trump’s third senior club championship at the course. He also won it in 2012 and 2013. He also claimed to have won the club championship - not just for seniors! - in 1999, 2001, 2009 and 2018.

People who have played with him say he’s a very good golfer - for his age. He is a single digit handicap, meaning he usually shoots somewhere between 5 and 10 strokes above par in each round.

Golf Magazine’s Lou Kerr Dineen, who has analyzed all presidential golfers for whom there is footage, says: “He hits the ball a long way off the tee. And he focuses singularly on hitting the ball off the tee. To him that’s the sign of a good golfer. Putting and all these other details are not as telling as your ability to hit the ball.”

That analysis is almost too on the nose; Trump, hyper-focused on bashing the ball off the tee and not at all concerned with the other, more nuanced aspects of the game.

Trump is well known for often playing the first round at a new course he owns and then declaring himself the club champion for having shot the lowest round at the course. If, in a random round, he shoots lower than the winning score shot during the club championship, he will subsequently declare himself the de facto club champion.

There are those who say you can understand everything about a man by watching how he plays the game of golf. It’s a game rooted in self-policing and a moral philosophy that results in one absolutely not wanting to do other than strictly play by the rules of the game.

We know how well Trump follows the rules of any game, don’t we?

Put simply: The chances of shooting a single digit handicap - at age 77 - five strokes under par are roughly the same as the chances that Trump is, in fact, 6’3” and 215 pounds.

It is reported that two weeks ago, the very same course hosted a tournament put on by Saudi-backed LIV Golf; an event which featured many of the best players in the world. Trump’s claimed score of 67 was better than all but one of the 48 players in the final round of that tournament. Legendary 6-time major champion Phil Mickelson shot 75 that day - 8 strokes worse than the score Trump claims he posted on the very same layout.

The renowned moral philosopher and Princeton professor (emeritus), Harry Frankfurt opens his book "On Bullshit" by noting:

“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.”

Bullshitting and lying have much in common, but Professor Frankfurt makes this important distinction: “The bullshitter does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.”

Both liars and bullshitters want you to believe that they are telling the truth.

And both want to get away with something.

Liars engage in a conscious act of deception. Liars know the truth, but attempt to hide it. Liars spread untruths, but they still accept the distinction between the truth and false.

Bullshitters ignore or reject the distinction between truth and falsity altogether.

There is a special kind of mania to a person not merely lies, but feels the need to send that lie far and wide. For Trump, when playing golf - as in life - good is never good enough.

Trump later sent out the phone number of the head pro at Bedminster, who would verify his score. And, yes, that individual works for him.

When it comes to his personal wealth, his political accomplishments, his weight or even his golf game, Trump can’t help himself; he has to wildly exaggerate whatever he’s done in order to comport to some winning standard he maintains in his head. That suchclaims are on their face laughable - and easily disproven -doesn’t even register with him. Because he knows in his heart that he is the biggest loser of all, the one who will always have his face pressed against the glass of the door that will never be opened to admit him to the company of his betters, he has to keep lying bigger and bigger to be the best.

Rick Reilly, 2019 book, “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump” is perhaps the best takedown of Trump and his bullshit by anyone. A few points:

I used to have this coach who told us, “How you do one thing is how you do everything. You loaf in practice, you’re gonna loaf in the game. You cheat on your tests, you’re gonna cheat on your wife.”

“I’ve found that to be true with golf. The guy who plays slowly on the course is going to be molasses in meetings. The guy who’s generous with compliments on the course is going to do the same at dinner. And the guy who cheats on the course is going to cheat in business, or on his taxes or, say, in politics.

“Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf. He cheats like a three-card Monte dealer. He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs. At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: “Pele.”

“I played with him once,” says Bryan Marsal, longtime Winged Foot member and chair of the coming 2020 Men’s U.S. Open. “It was a Saturday morning game. We go to the first tee and he couldn’t have been nicer. But then he said, ‘You see those two guys? They cheat. See me? I cheat. And I expect you to cheat because we’re going to beat those two guys today.’… So, yes, it’s true, he’s going to cheat you. But I think Donald, in his heart of hearts, believes that you’re gonna cheat him, too. So if it’s the same, if everybody’s cheating, he doesn’t see it as really cheating.”

“85 percent of casual golfers play by the rules, according to the National Golf Foundation.

“To say “Donald Trump cheats” is like saying “Michael Phelps swims.” He cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching, and he cheats when they aren’t. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that’s how he plays golf, that’s how he learned it, that’s how he needs it, and whether you’re his pharmacist or Tiger Woods, if you’re playing golf with him, he’s going to cheat.”

“But why? Why does Trump cheat so much when he’s already a decent player? And how can he be so shameless as to cheat right in front of people? They call him on it, but he just shrugs and cheats some more. It’s ruined his reputation in the golf world. Ninety percent of the people I interviewed — on and off the record — say he openly cheats. A lot of them said they stopped playing with him because of it. So why? Why cheat? Why lie? Why exaggerate his handicap, his scores, his club championships?

“Because he has to,” says Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Lance Dodes, co-author of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. “He needs to be the best at everything. He can’t stand not winning, not being the best. It had to have started very early in his development. To him, not being the best is like fingernails on the blackboard to you. He can’t live with it.”

“Whenever I’ve caddied in Trump’s group,” says Greg Puga, an elite Los Angeles amateur and caddy, who has Trump in his group plenty, “he always gets his own cart. He makes sure to hit first off every tee box and then jumps in the cart, so he’s halfway down the fairway before the other three are done driving. That way he can get up there quick and mess with his ball.

“Former coach Mike Dunleavy tells a story about he and Trump as partners in a game against two of their buddies. Dunleavy hits his approach shot onto the corner of a kidney-shaped green that left him no possible putt. He was going to have to chip it off the green or somehow try to putt through the fringe and hope it came out back onto the green. Trump, his partner, came over and secretly knocked the ball on to a part of the green where Dunleavy could putt it. Dunleavy picked it up and put it back where it was.

“That’s when Donald starts yelling to the other two,” Dunleavy recalls. “He goes, ‘Guys, guys! I wanna tell you how great a guy Coach is. I knocked his ball over here so he could have a putt at it. But then he put it back! And that’s why he’s an unemployed coach and I’m worth $13 billion.”

Fox golf analyst Brad Faxon recalled a game he played with Trump and Tiger Woods: “It was really fun to play with him. He rakes [picks up] every putt [as if it’s conceded], but you kind of want him to. You’ve heard so much about it, it’s almost like you want to witness it so you can tell the stories.”

And so he does. About everything. Every single word is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

Let’s give Frankfurt the last word, since his explanation of why bullshit has become so prevalent in our culture is exactly right:

“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic.”

Best commentary I have read recently, which relates strongly to the points I’m making here, comes from the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (if you didn’t watch his appearance on the newest episode of “Billions” last night, you should go watch it - even if you’re not a fan of the show - because of the profound truth he articulates; you have to watch the whole episode to understand them in context. Then you should memorize what he said and apply it to your life.) Anyway:

“The reality is that core Trump supporters in their MAGA hats and mugshot t-shirts are merely cosplayers prancing around in costume like children putting on a play. The other Republican candidates realize that, unless Trump goes to jail before the election, they won’t be getting any of those votes.”

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