Trump's Golf Corruption, Explained

EPISODE 250: FIGJAM.

Since publishing this episode this week, I have a statistic to update.

Because as of today, June 12, Donald Trump has now spent 25.7% of his presidency golfing — at an estimated cost of $50.8 million dollars to U.S. taxpayers. (This according to the very helpful DidTrumpGolfToday.com.)

But before we dive into America’s golfer-in-chief, you may recall hearing something about this sport’s cold civil war.

Maybe even thanks to our guest.

Alan Shipnuck is a longtime reporter and author who found himself writing an unauthorized biography of one of the greatest and most bombastic American athletes of all time: Phil Mickelson. With the key word here, of course, being unauthorized. Because Alan, in the course of his reporting, pried open an early window into a new golf super league, created and funded by the Saudi Arabian government, called LIV. 

At the time, LIV was readying to poach star players from North American golf’s incumbent governing body, the PGA Tour. Which itself was crazy. But LIV was also doing this on the heels of the 2018 assassination of The Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi, which was reportedly orchestrated by the Saudi government. Whose general human rights record — and linkage to September 11 — was already an American concern.

Soon there were (more) lawyers, and dozens of allegations of monopolistic behavior against the PGA, and the players who defected to this Saudi-backed tour had to defend themselves in public.

But today, in 2025, as the U.S. Open tees off, the scene is conspicuously different.

And that, in large part, is due to what I’ve come to think of as Golf Yalta: a summit between the heads of LIV, and the PGA, and the American government.

At the White House.

As Donald Trump makes his play for the thing he loves the most.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Fore,

Pablo