President Donald Trump spent Thanksgiving at the White House for the first time during his presidency Thursday, but he did squeeze in a round of golf between his tweets and a contentious press conference with reporters. Video from his time at his Sterling, Virginia golf course surfaced on TMZ, showing him cursing as he swung. Trump also had strong language for the media later Thursday, sharing baseless claims about widespread voter fraud during the election.
In the brief video, Trump can be heard complaining about the hole after he took a swing. “Oh s—,” he said. When the ball disappeared into the water, he complained, “I hate this f— hole.” People watching him can be heard laughing. After his time at the course, Trump went back to the White House, where he celebrated Thanksgiving with “immediate family,” First Lady Melania Trump’s spokesperson said.
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Trump also spoke with U.S. military leaders overseas and took questions from reporters afterward. It was the first time he took questions since the election on Nov. 3, but he repeated many of the same claims about a “rigged” election. Trump said he would “certainly” leave the White House if the Electoral College confirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, but said that would be a “mistake.” It is “going to be a very hard thing to concede,” Trump said. He also claimed Biden “did not get” 80 million votes, echoing a tweet he published earlier on Thanksgiving. State election officials have claimed there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election, and many of the Trump campaign’s legal challenges have been unsuccessful.
Trump continued tweeting Friday morning, retweeting several links from the right-wing networks One America News and Newsmax. At one point, Trump tweeted a claim from OANN that Biden’s Thanksgiving Day address got 1,000 views online. “Observers say a candidate with ‘80,000,000’ votes would get many more online viewers. Numbers don’t lie, or add up,” Trump wrote. However, Biden’s Thanksgiving Day message got 5.1 million views on Twitter alone. Biden also delivered a speech on Wednesday, and it has over 856,300 views on Twitter and over 88,000 views on YouTube.
Trump’s love of golfing on the weekends was scrutinized throughout his time in office. Trump did participate in the virtual G20 summit on Saturday, but he skipped a side-conference on the coronavirus pandemic, reports CNN. He did make an appearance at the opening of the event, but he started tweeting about the election just 13 minutes after the conference began. Two hours after it started, Trump was already at the golf course.
