The Daily Mail rounds up media reaction to President Obama’s habit of interrupting his golf rounds with the occasional foray into being President of the United States.
It’s not pretty.
President Barack Obama teed off again on Thursday, just 24 hours after pictures of his wide grin on the golf course drew condemnation in the wake of the beheading of American photojournalist James Foley.
‘Admit it,’ a White House pool reporter emailed the press corps. ‘You all made small-dollar bets that POTUS would be playing golf today. And … you would be right!’
‘We are at the Farm Neck Golf Club at 1:13 pm. and POTUS is hitting the links again.’
The president drew fire Wednesday after reacting to Foley’s on-camera slaying for just five minutes, and then gripping his driver.
He had told a global audience minutes earlier that ‘when people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done.’
Then he was seen laughing with friends and fist-bumping them during a five-hour round at Farm Neck on Martha’s Vineyard.
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ABC News political director Rick Klein told Fox host Greta van Susteren three hours earlier that the White House is ‘well past the point of caring about the so-called “optics” of things like this. And the president himself clearly doesn’t … care about the way it looks.’
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‘Golfing today is in bad taste,’ tweeted Vox editor-in-chief Ezra Klein, a long-time Obama backer.
Even little Ezra Klein gets it.
The president has been breaking speed records for getting to the golf course after commenting on some serious issue. He made the trip in just 7 minutes the other day.
It would be one thing is this was a typical August, but August 2014 is anything but. Ferguson MO has been embroiled in race riots, the Middle East is swarming with ISIS, who just beheaded an American, and there’s a shooting war brewing between Ukraine and Russia.
The president is supposed to set the tone. He just doesn’t care about that, or about the country that he’s supposed to lead.
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