“I was always the best athlete.”
Recently Trump sat down with four reporters from The Wall Street Journal to discuss immigration, the Russia investigation, and his recent fallout with former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. Trump was more lucid than his recent rambling interview with The New York Times that called into question his mental state, but Trump was still Trump, and he had no problem peddling the usual falsehoods:
“I believe if the opposing party got in, I believe the stock market would have fallen 50 percent”
“...we have companies pouring back into this country”
“I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un of North Korea”
Later in the interview, after a question about the negative press he’s received from left-wing media, Trump went on a non-sequitur brag-rant of biblical proportions:
“I was always the best at what I did, I was the — I was, you know, I went to the — I went to the Wharton School of Finance…”
“I started in Brooklyn, in a Brooklyn office with my father, I became one of the most successful real-estate developers, one of the most successful business people”
“I created maybe the greatest brand.”
“The Apprentice on many evenings was the number one show on all of television”
“I ran for president first time and lo and behold, I win”
(Editor’s note: Trump unsuccessfully ran for the presidential nomination of the Reform Party in 2000 but ultimately withdrew. The party’s nomination went to another man who’s based his political career on provoking racism, Pat Buchanan.)
While the former brags are all on Trump’s usual greatest hits list, he dropped in a second-tier boast that he doesn’t get to as often.
“I was always the best athlete, people don’t know that.”
While Trump did play high school football and soccer, calling himself “always the best athlete” is a bit of a stretch and we have video to prove it.
Here’s Trump playing tennis versus Serena Williams. There’s nothing incredibly athletic happening here.
Trump bounced a ceremonial first pitch at a 2004 Somerset Patriots game in Bridgewater, New Jersey:
\nIn 2004, Trump landed his helicopter on @SOMPatriots center field and threw out the first pitch: https://t.co/Ru05oRrX2v cc @PeterWStevenson pic.twitter.com/nq8H6Pu3im
— Jorge Ribas (@jribas) April 3, 2017\n
OK, it’s not a perfect spiral, but you can’t knock the accuracy of his arm here:
\nDonald Trump, in mom jeans, throws a football through a hole and gets props from Jim Kelly and his Hawaiian shirt. pic.twitter.com/qaWgZZqtCN
— Philip Bump (@pbump) July 29, 2015\n
Estimates show that Trump may have played up to 88 rounds of golf in his first year as president. With all that time on the course, one would assume he’d be spectacular. But expert analysis from Golf Digest shows he’s a slightly above average golfer. The magazine said he’s “not particularly long off the tee — averaging about 230 yards” and that his play around the green is “serviceable but without much variety.”
Golf Digest gave the president highest marks for his ball striking saying it’s “the best part of Trump’s game.” According to Trump, his golf game is a lot like his from-the-gut political strategy. “I think of golf as a very natural game,” he said. “I never really wanted to know a lot about my technique. I really trust instinct a lot, in golf and a lot of things.”
If you ask golf fanatic Samuel L. Jackson, Trump plays golf a lot like he deals with the American public, dishonestly. The two golfed together once and when asked who’s better by United Airlines’ in-flight magazine Rhapsody, Jackson said, “Oh, I am, for sure – I don’t cheat.”