NBC NEWS
Donald Trump has not golfed since an apparent assassination attempt near one of the former president’s golf courses on Sept. 15, and he will not do so at least until the election is over, according to a person close to the campaign and another person familiar with the situation.
A third person familiar with the conversations said Trump was told that federal agents could not ensure his safety to a degree with which they were comfortable while he is golfing. The concerns were conveyed in two conversations with Trump since the September incident: one with Ronald Rowe, the acting director of the Secret Service, and the other with officials from the national intelligence director’s office.
The safety issue had been on Trump’s mind.
Trump had asked Rowe during a meeting last month whether it would be safe for him to continue golfing in the wake of the thwarted assassination attempt, and he was told he would need significant additional security given the proximity of some of his courses to public roads, The New York Times reported last month, citing information from three people familiar with their conversation.
Being unable to play golf is a significant change to Trump’s schedule and lifestyle. He has 18 golf properties around the world — including courses in Oman and Dubai — and throughout his three campaigns and his presidency, the sport has been a fixture in his life.
During his presidency, he spent over 260 days at his various golf properties. It is unclear whether he golfed each time — unlike previous administrations, the White House would typically not say whether he was golfing or whom he was golfing with.
If Trump goes without golfing through Election Day, it will be the longest time he has gone without playing since the coronavirus pandemic, which kept him off the links for over two months.
Trump has generally golfed at least once a week since he left the White House, but his penchant for the greens exposed him to danger during his last outing at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sept. 15.
That’s when, the Justice Department said, a Secret Service agent spotted “the partially obscured face of a man” in “the brush along the fence line near the sixth hole” apparently lying in wait for Trump to get to the hole. The man, whom authorities later identified as Ryan Routh, fled after the agent fired at him, and he was arrested a short time later.
Routh has been charged with attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate and faces up to life in prison if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty.
The West Palm Beach incident was the second attempt to assassinate Trump. In July, he was hit in the ear when Thomas Crooks fired at him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Since those incidents, the Secret Service has ramped up its security for both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris to an unprecedented degree. Bulletproof glass and extra agents are now common at campaign events.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said that as a matter of policy, it wouldn’t comment on “conversations between the Acting Director and a protectee” and deferred questions to Trump’s campaign.
“Since the attempted assassination of former President Trump on July 13, the U.S. Secret Service has made comprehensive changes and enhancements to our communications capabilities, resourcing, and protective operations,” he added in his statement to NBC News. “Today, the former President is receiving heightened protection and we take the responsibility to ensure his safety and security very seriously.”
The Trump campaign did not provide a comment for this article.
Trump has said that golfing is important to him,and that it is his main form of exercise.
“I know many in business and politics that work out endlessly, in some cases to a point of exhaustion. It is their number one passion in life, but nobody complains. My ‘exercise’ is playing, almost never during the week, a quick round of golf,” he tweeted in 2020, when he was president. “I play VERY fast, get a lot of work done on the golf course, and also get a ‘tiny’ bit of exercise. Not bad!”
Trump’s frequent golf outings to his properties while he was president made headlines because he had frequently criticized President Barack Obama for golfing during his first presidential campaign.
“Because I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to play golf. Believe me,” Trump told a Virginia crowd in August 2016.
He said in 2020 that his time on the course was different from his predecessor’s because Obama played “much longer rounds.”
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