A Message From Sophie


Hello! I'm glad you've found your way to my website. While I've got you here, let me briefly tell you who I am, why I'm doing this, and how the data gathering for trumpgolfcount.com (currently) works.

Who I am

Basically, I'm a data junkie. Probably like you, I am concerned about the erosion of truth that is currently plaguing U.S. politics, and I am kind of unhealthily obsessed with calling out hypocrisy wherever I see it.

Why I do this

When I first got the idea to track the President's golf outings, I set out to create a website that would be factual, yet entertaining. Alas, I'm finding that many people just don't "get it" (but some of you clearly do!) Even my own mother asked me "Sophie, why are you doing this?" Well, my primary mission is to get these numbers right! I am also having tons of fun doing it. Sometimes, when the world gets unbelievably crazy, the only thing you can do is laugh. Laugh, and then get back to work fighting to make things sane again.

How I track counts

Who would have thought that tracking the number of times someone plays golf could be so fraught with ambiguity? The President is perhaps the most closely watched human being on earth, so counting his golf outings should be incredibly easy. It has become clear, though, that our fearless leader is prone to hiding his "bad behavior," even going so far as to block fancy golf club windows with garbage bags to hide his golf habit from reporters. What the heck? You would think he was sleeping with a White House intern out on the golf course the way he sneaks around and has his staff lie about what he's doing.

So I've adjusted my goals. I've set up a filter of the White House Pool reporters' RSS feed. The pool reporters take turns covering the President's activity, which means they now spend a boatload of time in Palm Beach, Florida, sitting in a library across the street from the golf club for hours while the President holds his "meetings and phone calls." I am using their reports to track the time POTUS spends at his golf clubs, which as of today, already totals over 44 hours. This, at least, is a confirmable number, as is the number of times his motorcade has pulled into Trump golf clubs since the inauguration. I'll keep those numbers up to date, and when reporters catch him, I'll also keep count of the times he's observed actually hitting the ball. Keen observers will note from the table on this site that I included as an official "golf sighting" the occasion when POTUS was photographed wearing a golf glove at the club. That one just seemed like a no-brainer to me, but if you disagree, let me know! Also, while at first I was counting each time he was at a golf club for 4 hours or more as a golf outing, your responses to TGCount's recent poll made it clear you want to know whenever he sets foot in his clubs (so do I), so the website now includes a count of all his visits to golf clubs, as well as the count of confirmed golf outings, without these arbitrary cutoffs.

Please, come back and check the totals now and then. I plan to change content frequently, and would love to hear from you, either through polling or by reading your emails to sophiegermain2017@gmail.com. You should feel free to suggest a new poll question or start a discussion on the Facebook page. After all, we are all in this together, and it would be great to get to know you better.

Live well and prosper!

Sophie

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This page created and maintained by Sophie Germain.