Trump gets ready for some golf course diplomacy with Japan's Abe

[demmiblue]

Source: Politico

President Donald Trump is said to be a gracious host at his golf courses. He high-fives his playing partners after a good shot and keeps his cool when his own game goes awry, according to friends, never cursing or throwing his clubs.

But he is also known to run afoul of the game’s play-it-as-it-lies rules. And his trash-talking habit is well-documented by his long-time golfing partners, sportswriters and even links legends like Tiger Woods.

It’s not clear which Trump will show up on the golf course this weekend, when the president hosts Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at his Mar-A-Lago resort in South Florida.

“He’s absolutely unscrupulous, absolutely completely bankrupt of any morality, when it comes to golf,” said Rick Reilly, a longtime sportswriter who joined Trump on the course for a 2004 book about caddying for celebrities. “I don’t know how the Japanese are going to like that.”

<snip>

“I like to play with someone who can take some ribbing,” he told Golf Magazine in a 2008 interview. “If someone’s ball is hanging above a bunker and about to go in, I may shout out, ‘Bury!’ But you have to know who you can do that with. I don’t like playing with guys who are overly serious. You can’t forget that playing golf is not what we do for a living.”

But when he tees it up with Abe, he may want to be careful he doesn’t create a diplomatic crisis, said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow on Japan at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“It depends on how trashy,” she said. Abe, she said, is “a fairly respectful classy kind of guy. I don’t think he’s going to really get into stuff in the way we’ve heard some of the conversations at rallies with Mr. Trump.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-japan-abe-golf-234871

[Goonch]

1. FORE

[frazzled]

2. I don't mind golf-course diplomacy, BUT

I do mind it if there is some monetary compensation to the president's own business (the golf club/resort) because of it. Please tell me that Mar-a-Lago won't directly profit from this.