By Dan Diamond · The Washington Post (c) 2025
OUTSIDE TRUMP NATIONAL GOLF CLUB, JUPITER, Fla. – The stock markets have lost more than $6 trillion in value since President Donald Trump’s decision to upend the global economic order and impose sweeping tariffs last week.Americans have lost retirement savings. Business leaders are bracing to lose customers and revenue.
But on Sunday, the president won. Trump said he took first in the Senior Club Championship at his golf club here.
“It’s good to win,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “You heard I won, right?”
The president’s victory came as the nation’s markets grapple with the most significant financial bet of his presidency: his belief that sweeping tariffs will strengthen the U.S. economy. Economists have warned the resulting trade war and higher prices could send the nation into a deep recession. Overseas markets fell sharply overnight.
Trump adopted a relatively low profile since announcing the tariffs at a Rose Garden event late Wednesday afternoon, with few events on his calendar through the weekend. Instead, he opted for a familiar sanctuary: the golf course.
After arriving in Florida on Thursday, Trump spent nearly 18 hours at his courses, according to pool reports and a Washington Post analysis. The time includes about four hours at his Doral club, where he joined members of the LIV Golf tour on Thursday for dinner. The president also spent parts of the subsequent three days playing golf himself.
The visuals made for a striking contrast, as investors have confronted a sea of red – and Trump tackled the greens. While traders weighed their put options, the president contemplated his putts.
In the nearly six hours that Trump stayed at his Palm Beach course on Friday – nearly the entire window that U.S. markets were open that day – the Dow dropped about 715 points.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about Trump’s golf activities, but Trump and his allies posted photos and videos of his visits to his courses across the weekend. Democrats have eagerly amplified the images, saying that they show a leader out of touch with average Americans’ concerns.
“That may end up being the most enduring image of the Trump presidency,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California) said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “The president out on a golf cart while people’s retirement is in flames.”
Trump’s first term was marked by his regular golf excursions and visits to Florida, which drew scrutiny too. Federal agencies spent about $3.4 million on a typical Trump trip to his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2017, according to a Government Accountability Office report released two years later.
But his willingness to spend so much time golfingas the markets dropped and investors panicked reveal a president particularly unburdened in his second term, even as lawmakers, corporate CEOs and other allies have frantically tried to get Trump to change course.
Trump officials have argued that the anxiety about financial markets is overstated. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday dismissed questions about the hit to Americans’ retirement savings as “a false narrative.”
“Americans who want to retire right now, the Americans who have put away for years in their savings account, I think they don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening,” Bessent said on “Meet The Press.”
Advocates countered that the sudden decline in the value of 401(k)s and other saving vehicles is an immediate concern for average Americans, particularly those seeking to retire.
“Secretary Bessent is clearly clueless,” said Rich Fiesta, the executive director at the Alliance for Retired Americans, a nonprofit advocacy group. “Every American, especially those thinking about or close to retirement, watched financial markets in horror last week and worries how much worse their situation will become.”
Presidents have long faced questions about how they spend their leisure time – sometimes from Trump. In his first campaign for the White House, Trump repeatedly criticized then-President Barack Obama for playing rounds of golf, arguing that it distracted from other national priorities.
“I’m going to be working for you,” Trump vowed at one 2016 campaign rally. “I’m not going to have time to go play golf.”
Obama also acknowledged the political challenges of playing golf, suggesting that he regretted his decision to hit the links minutes after delivering a public statement in 2014 about U.S. journalist James Foley’s killing in Syria.
“I should’ve anticipated the optics,” Obama said in an appearance on “Meet the Press” that year. “Part of this job is also the theater of it.”
Fact-checks found that Trump spent more time than Obama on the golf course in his first term.
Three months into Trump’s second presidency, a pattern has emerged: The president generally flies to Florida on Friday, returns on Sunday, and spends about a dozen hours at his golf courses in the interval between. He has visited his golf courses on 24 separate days since Inauguration Day – roughly one-third of his 76 days in office – devoting more than 105 hours to those trips,per The Post’s analysis.
Sometimes Trump has skipped his Sunday golf outing, such as on Feb. 16 when he instead attended the Daytona 500. But the president opted to remain in Florida and golf across the next three days, spending more than 15 hours at his club, according to pool reports.
Trump had recently hinted he was finished with golf tournaments.
“I just won the Golf Club Championship, probably my last, at Trump International Golf Club, in Palm Beach County, Florida. Such a great honor! The Awards dinner is tonight, at the Club,” the president posted on social media on March 16.
Florida is Trump country, with the president solidly winning the state in all three of his bids for the White House. It is also golf country. Drivers can take PGA Boulevard off Interstate 95 en route to Trump’s Jupiter club. The course is flanked by a half-dozen other courses in every direction – such as Bear’s Club, named for famed golfer and Trump friend Jack Nicklaus – and weekend golfers trickled in on Sunday as the president headed back to Mar-a-Lago in nearby Palm Beach.
Some Floridians on Sunday shrugged off Trump’s golf habits.
“I guess there are other things he could be doing as president,” Andy Droullard, a mechanical engineer who was attending bible study at his nearby church in Jupiter. “But he also has to relax like the rest of us.”
Mike Pasayan, a retiree who said he had watched his financial holdings dwindle since the tariff announcement, said he didn’t vote for Trump but didn’t blame him for golfing.
“Maybe it’ll help him clear his mind,” Pasayan said. “I hope he changes his decision.”
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Maria Paul, Tim Meko and Daniel Wolfe contributed to this report.
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