President Hobbies closes out year five
I am pleased to report that we have reached, as of writing, the 361st day of 2025, a year that includes only 365 days despite feeling as though it has included 36,500. This has been the longest year since 2020, in a figurative and non-complimentary sense. So I'm closing it out with a quick look at someone who knows how essential a robust work-life balance is.
Chapter 1
Even Trump is working two jobs
You will probably recall that 2025 began with the inauguration of Donald Trump as president. You will probably also recall that he had been president before, so we figured we knew what to expect but, hahaha, no we did not. This has been a different President Trump, one less focused on fitting himself into the presidency than on fitting the presidency into himself.
But one familiar tic has returned: his unabashed interest in hanging out at Trump Organization properties. Lots of presidents try to get away from Washington on occasion; Joe Biden went back to his home in Delaware on most weekends. No one, though, has done it quite like Trump, heading from the White House to revenue-generating properties to mingle with his private customers on most weekends (and then some).
I've been tracking this, as I did in his first term. And when I tell you that his commitment to spending time at his private clubs and golf courses is remarkable, I don't need you to take it on faith.
So far in his second term, he's spending time at Trump Organization joints more often than he did the first time around. From 2017 to 2021, he got off to a somewhat slow start, at times opting to refrain from visiting Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster when it might not look great: during a government shutdown, for example, or covid. During his fifth year in office — a year with a historically long shutdown! — he's felt no such constraints.
He's been playing golf even more frequently, making constant trips to Trump courses (mostly in Virginia and West Palm Beach) to play a round. I'm writing this before I know if he will do so today but, since he has played on 6 of the last 7, I'm just going to assume yes.
Out of an abundance of fairness, I will note that we often don't know that he's playing golf. He'll head to a private club for a few hours in golf attire and keep the press out; maybe he's just there to read briefing papers and conduct the business of state. But, then, he has in the past called golf his "primary form of exercise" and we are not tiny naive little babies, so I think it's safe to assume he's playing golf.
I will also note that these metrics are often intentionally squishy and hard to pin down. Like: How much does this cost taxpayers? It's hard to say, and anyone telling you a concrete number is mostly inventing it. We know that some of his earliest trips to Mar-a-Lago cost about $3.4 million a pop, largely from the cost of flying down there. Other incurred costs are murkier, though, which is undoubtedly how Trump likes it.
Comparing Trump's first term to his second term obscures the frequency with which he has visited Trump Organization properties as president. As of Saturday, he will have spent all or part of 125 days during his second term at one of those properties, waking up, as he did, at Mar-a-Lago yet again. That brings his two-term total to an even 550 days.
("All or part" is another bit of haziness. When he flies to Mar-a-Lago on a Friday evening, that Friday counts, even though he doesn't spend all day there. But: Shouldn't it?)
If he keeps up this pace for his second term and sticks around until January 2029, he'll have spent all or part of nearly 950 days of his eight years in office at one of his business's private, income-generating properties.
This is, by any standard, exceptional.
And then there's the golf. You may recall that, when he was first running for president back in 2015 and 2016, Trump would regularly excoriate Barack Obama for how often he would head out to the federally owned course at Joint Base Andrews to play a round. At one point Trump said that he would not play golf at all, given how busy he would be as president.
That's … not how it has worked out. Obama played 333 rounds of golf during his eight years as president, according to the late CBS reporter Mark Knoller. Trump has surpassed that total in less than five years.
If he continues at his current pace, in fact, he'll nearly double Obama's total by January 2029.
Trump's more-frequent visits to his properties to play golf means that he has visited a property on all or part of more than a third of the days of his second term and likely played golf on more than a quarter.
Over the course of his five years in office, those figures are slightly lower: 3 in 10 and 2 in 10, respectively. (Again, Obama golfed half as often.)
If those percentages hold, though, they'll mean that, over eight years in office, Trump will have spent all or part of 2.4 years at a Trump Organization property and likely played golf on the equivalent of 1.6 years.
The presidency, man. Nice work, if you can avoid it.
Chapter 2
Chart Attack
I promised you and myself that this particular newsletter would be a bit shorter than most, what with Christmas and the kids off school and so on. So, 1,200 words into this thing, I renew my commitment to that idea by transitioning immediately into Chart Attack.
We begin with a striking look from the New York Times at how little money was saved by Elon Musk's (remember Elon Musk?) slash-and-burn approach to federal power.
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, shows that it isn't just the little guy struggling to make ends meet at the moment. It's also the little business.
The Times also put together an excellent visualization of the mechanics of America's deportation infrastructure.
All that work, and Trump still managed to squeeze in a little golf and schmoozing!
Let us end the year on a less political note, focusing instead on the many parsecs that separate the vocabularies of men and women, thanks to YouGov polling.
An excellent visualization from FlowingData shows the people with whom American men and women spend their time over the course of a day. Below, you can see the data for a middle-aged men like (sigh) myself, though this is a little light on "kids under 18" and a little heavy on (sigh) co-workers to capture my weekdays accurately.
We culminate the year with a bit of service journalism: this clip-and-save guide from the terrific Ruben Bolling that details when you should help, kill or eat other living creatures.
Never again will you find yourself contemplating an insect and wondering if you should pop it in your mouth. Go ahead! Live your life! Just be sure to share it with your co-workers.
So ends 2025, with a rumination on entomophagy and the leisure time of our president, just as might have been predicted. See you in January.
Appendix
Some other things I've written
I want to add a special pitch here for a piece I wrote on my personal site about a family tradition that, I discovered, my grandmother had also written about nearly 50 years ago. How I learned about it, how I tracked it down and the introspection that resulted — all laid out for your enrichment!
If you prefer my data-slash-politics writing? Well, I did some of that, too.
Anthony L. Fisher
Anthony L. Fisher
Anthony L. Fisher
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