For the better part of a year, Donald Trump has used his indictments, and civil and criminal court cases to complain about not being able to campaign despite maintaining a relatively light campaign schedule when he wasn’t in court. That has continued to this day, even as his legal issues are effectively on hold. But since the day after the June 27 debate, when he held a rally in Virginia, the convicted ex-president has not held any public events – no rallies, no public speeches, no public trips to Chick-fil-A, just a few interviews, leading some critics to ask, “Where’s Trump?”
“This is what took me off and takes me off the campaign trail,” Trump told reporters in April, from a New York courthouse where his criminal business fraud trial was being held, as the Associated Press reported. “Because I should be in Georgia now. I should be in Florida now. I should be in a lot of different places right now campaigning. And I’m sitting here and this will go in for a long time. It’s very unfair that the judge is conflicted. As you know, it’s very unfair what’s going on. And I should be allowed to campaign.”
But when he hasn’t been in court he often hasn’t been out campaigning.
Unlike President Biden, Trump doesn’t have a “day job,” as The Washington Examiner’s Benjamin Rothove observed nearly a year ago, in August of 2023 as the GOP primary was in full swing:
“Donald Trump doesn’t have a day job. There is no excuse for him not being on the campaign trail every single day. He simply isn’t trying to win. He’s burning all of his campaign cash on lawyers, and after the debate, GOP voters will see that they truly have better options.”
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Trump’s golf course campaign has been the subject of some mockery on social media.
“Joe Biden has been to every top battleground state but one since the Super Tuesday primaries. He has also been on unannounced calls pushing negotiators toward a Gaza ceasefire, among other official White House duties,” CNN reported back in March. “Donald Trump has held one rally in a battleground state in those two and a half weeks, and shifted another to Ohio, in part to save on costs. He has also played in two golf tournaments at his Palm Beach golf club, among other activities at his club, like lunches with potential campaign donors that aides feel are about to start paying off big.”
Trump’s desire to be on the links has not diminished since his presidency. According to the website TrumpGolfCount.com (archived), the then-president visited golf courses 298 times during his presidency (only through December 30, 2020) allegedly at a cost to taxpayers of $144 million.
Over the past eleven days, since the debate, Trump has held only one rally. According to CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere, in that time, Trump “has not left his golf course in New Jersey and has spent many hours on the links.”
Monday morning in a surprise MSNBC interview President Biden criticized Trump, saying the ex-president “hasn’t done a damn thing since the debate. He’s been riding around a golf cart for ten days down in Mar-a-Lago talking with his wealthy friends.”
Trump is expected to break that streak on Tuesday, at his golf course in Doral, Florida, which is currently under an excessive heat advisory.
By contrast, President Biden has made 18 “post-debate appearances,” according to The Independent, which slammed Trump for being “in hiding for 10 days.”
The Trump campaign appears nervous about the presumptive GOP nominee’s absence. Fox News Monday afternoon ran a headline that reads: “Trump focused on campaigning, as Dems are ‘in disarray’ amid Biden chaos.” It claimed, “Trump is prepping for two rallies, the announcement of his VP pick and the RNC convention, a campaign source says.”
