Former President Donald Trump was mocked after he issued a formal statement using his "official" letterhead to claim that he had hit a hole-in-one at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump, via his official spokesperson Liz Harrington, claimed that he hit the golf ball “magnificently into a rather strong wind, with approximately 5 feet of cut, whereupon it bounced twice and then went clank, into the hole.”
You can read the full statement below:
Trump's statement did not reveal who actually won the game “because I am a very modest individual" but did include a video of him retrieving the ball after the fact.
Adding to the smugness of Trump's declaration was that he drew further attention to his golf habit.
Trump was often criticized for taking trips to his golf courses during times of national crisis, and earned the dubious distinction of spending more time on golf courses than any other President in history.
In fact, Trump spent time on the grounds of his golf courses or played golf elsewhere at least 308 times between January 20, 2017 and December 30, 2020, according to one count.
The former President was criticized at one point for installing a golf simulator in the White House at the same time his demand for a border wall triggered a month-long partial government shutdown.
His leaked schedules also featured long blocks of "executive time," periods when his schedule showed no official meetings.
Many have criticized Trump's statement as yet another example of his braggadocio.
Trump's remarks about being "a modest individual" bring to mind what is perhaps his most infamous self-assessment.
In 2018, in an effort to discredit reports questioning his mental fitness, then-President Trump fired off a series of tweets in which he declared he is “like, really smart” and “a very stable genius.”
Trump issued the remarks in response to journalist Michael Wolff's controversial book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. The book became a runaway bestseller after the Trump administration tried unsuccessfully to halt its publication.
The book became a flashpoint within the White House and tensions ultimately came to a head when Trump's attorneys accused his former chief strategist Steve Bannon of breaking a confidentiality agreement by making critical comments about Trump.
The controversy and subsequent shakeup, which did nothing to convince Trump's critics of his mental stability, later influenced an attempt by Trump's campaign to silence Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison, after she published a tell-all book they said breached her 2016 confidentiality agreement.