Trump bought $50,000 golf toy while blocking workers' paychecks

At the same time as he was withholding paychecks from hundreds of thousands of federal workers by keeping the government shut down, Trump decided to treat himself to a room-sized golf simulator game, which cost $50,000, and had it installed in the residence section of the White House.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the installation happened sometime in the past few weeks — which, as Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) pointed out, was “likely at the EXACT same time 800,000 federal employees were without pay.”

Pocan is referring to the 35-day Trump shutdown, during which Trump repeatedly refused to sign legislation to reopen the government and pay workers unless Democrats paid a $5.7 billion ransom for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Post noted that Trump complained to friends about not being able to play golf in Florida during the government shutdown.

But while Trump was buying himself a fancy new toy to pass the time, 1 in 4 federal workers were forced to visit a food pantry just to be able to feed themselves and their families.

According to the Post, Trump paid for the new toy himself. The $50,000 price tag is more than 80 percent of what a median American household earns in an entire year.

A recent survey showed that nearly half of federal workers fell behind on paying their bills during the shutdown — all thanks to Trump’s refusal to abandon his obsession with a border wall.

Trump has already built a reputation as one of the laziest presidents in American history. A recent release of Trump’s private schedules shows he spent 60 percent of the working day in “executive time,” a euphemism created by the White House to describe the time Trump wastes watching television and playing on Twitter.

And Trump was already abandoning work nearly every weekend to spend time playing golf at Trump-branded properties in Florida or New Jersey. Despite attacking President Obama for playing the occasional round of golf, Trump plays more than twice as many rounds as Obama, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Now Trump can spend even more time playing golf instead of working, in the comfort of his taxpayer-subsidized home — and hide his laziness from Americans by doing it during his “executive time” routine.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.