Trump haunted by awkward 2014 tweet
One of Donald Trump’s tweets from 2014 criticising his predecessor has come back to haunt him as the US president indulges in one of his favourite activities.
It’s been more than two months since President Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency, which led to most of America to shut down.
On Saturday, the president played golf for the first time since the declaration.
His return to the course was the latest sign that he wants the country back to pre-outbreak times, even as the US death toll from the virus nears 100,000, twice what he once predicted it would be.
Trump pulled away from the White House on a sunny morning wearing a white polo shirt, white cap and dark slacks.
Photographs that appeared later on Twitter showed him swinging a golf club and driving alone in a cart on the course at his private Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.
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The White House had no comment on the president’s activities at the club, but said he and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had discussed the pandemic’s effect on the global economy on Saturday.
However, a tweet from 2014 where President Trump criticised then-president Barack Obama for playing golf during the Ebola epidemic emerged.
“President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf,” President Trump tweeted six years ago.
President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2014
CNN pointed out on October 24, when President Trump tweeted, there were only two confirmed cases, whereas the US now has more than 1.6 million confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Of course, that wasn’t the first time President Trump critiqued the Obama administration. In August 2014, once again tweeting about Ebola, he called the leaders “incompetent”.
“Ebola patient will be brought to the U.S. in a few days - now I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent,” he tweeted.
“KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!”
President Trump then called Obama “stupid” in a tweet from September 2014.
“Why are we sending thousands of ill-trained soldiers into Ebola infested areas of Africa! Bring the plague back to U.S.? Obama is so stupid,” he said.
Trump is an avid golfer who has been overheard telling his White House guests how much he had missed playing the game.
The golf outing came a day after Trump said houses of worship were “essential” and he demanded that governors allow them to reopen during the holiday weekend.
It also followed guidance from Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, that it was OK for people to be outdoors this weekend as long as they took appropriate safety precautions.
She also said the Washington metropolitan area had the highest positivity rate in the country. The capital city’s coronavirus death rate is higher than all but four states: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
− With Associated Press
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