presidents

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump has spent much of his two-week vacation in Florida golfing. But when he gets back to the White House, there’s a military golf course that he’s never played that he’s eyeing for a major construction project.

Long a favored getaway for presidents seeking a few hours’ solace from the stress of running the free world, the Courses at Andrews — inside the secure confines of Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, about 15 miles from the White House — are known as the “president’s golf course.” Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Joe Biden have spent time there, and Barack Obama played it more frequently than any president, roughly 110 times in eight years.

Trump has always preferred the golf courses his family owns — spending about one of every four days of his second term at one of them. But he’s now enlisted golf champion Jack Nicklaus as the architect to overhaul the Courses at Andrews.

“It’s amazing that an individual has time to take a couple hours away from the world crises. And they’re people like everybody else,” said Michael Thomas, the former general manager of the course, who has golfed with many of the presidents visiting Andrews over the years.

Andrews, better known as the home of Air Force One, has two 18-hole courses and a 9-hole one. Its facilities have undergone renovations in the past, including in 2018, when Congress approved funding to replace aging presidential aircraft and to build a new hangar and support facilities. That project was close enough to the courses that they had to be altered then, too.

Trump toured the base by helicopter before Thanksgiving with Nicklaus, who has designed top courses the world over. The president called Andrews “a great place, that’s been destroyed over the years, through lack of maintenance.”

Other golfers, though, describe Andrews’ grounds as in good shape, despite some dry patches. Online reviews praise the course’s mature trees, tricky roughs, and ponds and streams that serve as water hazards. The courses are mostly flat, but afford views of the surrounding base.

‘They all like to drive the cart’

The first president to golf at Andrews was Ford in 1974. Thomas began working there a couple years later, and was general manager from 1981 until he retired in 2019.

He said the Secret Service over the years used as many as 28 golf carts — as well as the president’s usual 30-car motorcade — to keep the perimeter secure.

“It’s a Cecil B. DeMille production every time,” said Thomas, who had the opportunity to play rounds with four different presidents, and with Biden when he was vice president.

He said the commanders in chief generally enjoyed their time out on the course in their own unique ways, but “they all like to drive the cart because they never get an opportunity to drive.”

“It’s like getting your driver’s license all over again,” Thomas laughed.

Trump golfs most weekends, and as of Friday, has spent an estimated 93 days of his second term doing so, according to an Associated Press analysis of his schedules.

That tally includes days when Trump was playing courses his family owns in Virginia, around 30 miles from the White House, and near his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, where he’s spending the winter holidays. It also includes 10 days Trump spent staying at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., where his schedule allowed time for rounds of golf.

Trump has visited Andrews in the past, but the White House and base have no record of him playing the courses.

Another of Trump’s construction projects

Andrews’ military history dates to the Civil War, when Union troops used a church near Camp Springs, Md., as sleeping quarters. Its golf course opened in 1960.

The White House said the renovation will be the most significant in the history of Andrews. The courses and clubhouse need improvements due to age and wear, it said, and there are discussions about including a multifunctional event center as part of the project.

“President Trump is a champion-level golfer with an extraordinary eye for detail and design,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “His vision to renovate and beautify Joint Base Andrews’ golf courses will bring much-needed improvements that service members and their families will be able to enjoy for generations to come.”

Plans are in the very early stages, and the cost of — and funding for — the project haven’t been determined, the White House said. Trump has said only that it will require “very little money.”

The Andrews improvements join a bevy of Trump construction projects, including demolishing the White House’s East Wing for a sprawling ballroom now expected to cost $400 million, redoing the bathroom attached to the Lincoln bedroom and replacing the Rose Garden’s lawn with a Mar-a-Lago-like patio area.

Outside the White House, Trump has led building projects at the Kennedy Center and wants to erect a Paris-style arch near the Lincoln Memorial, and has said he wants to rebuild Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.

On Wednesday, meanwhile, the Trump administration ended a lease agreement with a nonprofit for three public golf courses in Washington — which could allow the president to further shape golfing in the nation’s capital. The White House, however, said that move isn’t related to the plans for Andrews.

Presidential perks of golfing at Andrews

When the president is golfing, Andrews officials block off nine holes at a time so no one plays in front of him, allowing for extra security while also ensuring consistent speed-of-play, Thomas said.

That’s relatively easily done given that the courses aren’t open to the public. They’re usually reserved for active or retired members of the military and their families, as well as some Defense Department-linked federal employees.

Thomas remembers playing a round with the older President Bush, a World Golf Hall of Fame inductee known for fast play, while first lady Barbara Bush walked with Millie, the first couple’s English Springer Spaniel. George W. Bush also played fast, Thomas said, and got additional exercise by frequently riding his mountain bike before golfing.

When he wasn’t golfing at Andrews, Obama tried to recreate at least part of the experience back home. He had a White House golf simulator installed after then-first lady Michelle Obama asked Thomas how they might acquire a model that the president had seen advertised on the Golf Channel. Thomas gave her a contact at the network.

Obama famously cut short a round at Andrews after nine holes in 2011 to hustle back to the White House for what turned out to be a top-secret review of final preparations for a Navy SEAL raid on the compound of Osama bin Laden.

But, while Thomas was golfing with presidents, he said he never witnessed play interrupted by an important call or any major emergency that forced them off the course mid-hole. There also were never any rain-outs.

“If there was rain coming, they’d get the weather forecast before we would,” Thomas said. “They would cancel quick on that.”

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

DETROIT — In the frantic final firefight of the 1992 presidential campaign, this battered industrial city may have been ground zero.

In the last days before today’s vote, President Bush and Bill Clinton crossed paths over and over again through a narrow band of critical Rust Belt and Great Lakes states–from New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Ohio and Wisconsin. But no state occupied more of their attention than Michigan.

Into this battlefield, the two major contenders have fired television and radio ads, mailings, surrogate speakers and repeated visits of their own–to the point where even veteran local observers have been overwhelmed. Their efforts–reinforced by Ross Perot’s national television barrage–have put the campaign on everyone’s lips.

“There’s a lot of strong feelings on it this year,” said LeAnn Kirrmann, a Republican activist from Grand Ledge, as she waited for Bush to arrive at a rally near here Sunday.

That appears to be the case across the nation, as voters render their verdict on this stormy, vituperative and often path-breaking campaign. Polls show the percentage of voters paying close attention to the campaign has soared this fall, and most experts expect a large turnout–a dramatic conclusion to a campaign that has regularly produced moments of high drama.

“It’s a mortal lock that turnout is going up,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff.

After tightening significantly last week, national polls show Clinton again holding a comfortable lead over Bush, with Perot lagging behind. Few observers are entirely certain that a campaign that has been consistently unpredictable doesn’t hold one or two more surprises. But a Bush comeback at this stage would rank as the most dramatic reversal of fortune in the final hours of a presidential race.

In their final maneuvering, both Bush and Clinton targeted this state for contrasting reasons that underscore the length of the odds facing the President.

The widespread economic uneasiness in Michigan–symbolized by the continuing turmoil of General Motors Corp., which led to a management shake-up Monday–has always made the state an uphill climb for Bush despite its Republican leanings in recent presidential campaigns.

It remains a daunting challenge for the President now: The latest statewide tracking poll for a Detroit TV station, released Monday night, showed Clinton leading with 46%, Bush with 30% and Ross Perot at 16%.

Facing such numbers, Bush might have written off Michigan in a different year to spend his last campaign hours elsewhere. But the President has been forced to pound relentlessly at the state because there appears to be no way he can win the necessary 270 electoral votes without Michigan’s 18.

That reality defines Clinton’s stake in the state. Although Clinton–with his strong base on both coasts–can probably win today without carrying Michigan, he has invested so heavily here precisely because he knows Bush cannot.

“That’s Clinton’s great advantage,” said Democratic strategist Tad Devine. “He can focus on trying to take just one link out of Bush’s chain.”

Clinton’s intense focus on Michigan represents the reversal of a traditional Republican tactic. Because the GOP base in the South and West left Democrats so little room to maneuver in past presidential campaigns, Republicans have typically been able to dictate the battlefield in the election’s final hours.

In past years, the Republicans devoted enormous resources to a single conservative-leaning state–usually Ohio–confident that if they won there, the Democrats could not reach an Electoral College majority.

This year, though, it is Clinton who has the lead and the flexibility to choose where to fight. He has selected Michigan as his version of Ohio.

“That is a pretty fair analogy,” said David Wilhelm, Clinton’s campaign manager. “Michigan is a linchpin to our Electoral College strategy; it is a state that if we win, it destroys almost any chance that Bush will be reelected.”

With the state playing such a central role in the strategies of both candidates, their efforts here have been enormous. “Some of us,” said Don Tucker, the Democratic chairman in populous Oakland County, “have started to think Clinton and Bush are running for President of Michigan.”

When Clinton arrived in Detroit on Monday for a lunchtime airport rally, it marked his third visit to the area in five days and his sixth trip to the state in two weeks.

On Sunday, Bush roused the faithful with a scathing attack on Clinton at a rally in Auburn Hills, just north of here–his third run at the state in eight days.

Last Thursday, voters from around the state were able to ask Bush questions in a televised town meeting from Grand Rapids. The next night Clinton flew to the Detroit suburbs to hold his own televised town meeting.

When Clinton forces made their final buy of television time last week, they estimated they were placing enough commercials on the air so that each Michigan resident would see them 14 times through Election Day.

Bush, both sides figure, is on the air even more heavily–especially with a foreboding spot about Clinton’s record as governor that might be titled “Apocalypse Arkansas.” From both sides, acerbic radio advertisements blare incessantly.

As for Perot, local observers say his ad assault has been less visible than in some other states. But his promises to shake up Washington have won him a strong following.

At one point early last week, Republican polls showed Perot surging over 20% in this state. With most of Perot’s gains coming from Clinton, that tightened the Michigan race considerably.

But, as has happened throughout the country, Perot’s support has slipped here since he accused the White House last week of engineering dirty tricks that forced his withdrawal from the race in July. Initially, the voters deserting Perot disproportionately moved to Bush, but now Clinton is winning his share of those voters and consolidating his lead.

“The President is unlikely to close the gap in Michigan on Election Day,” said GOP pollster Steve Lombardo.

Even with Clinton’s lead in the polls, Democrats here remain edgy. Almost without exception, they are haunted by the memory of 1990, when then-Gov. James J. Blanchard led Republican John Engler by 10 percentage points in the final polls–and then was swept from office by a strong Republican effort to get out their vote, coupled with a poor turnout in Detroit.

Democrats are insistent that won’t happen again. Registration is up in Detroit, and Mayor Coleman A. Young has put his shoulder into the Clinton effort. One local official estimated this weekend that 65% of registered Detroit voters could come to the polls today, compared to just 54% four years ago.

Unions are pushing hard too: The UAW has been distributing to members copies of a Flint newspaper article reporting that Ross Perot owns a Mercedes-Benz and other foreign cars. In Michigan, that’s not much different than burning a flag.

Republican efforts to turn out the vote are just as intense. In Oakland County alone, GOP volunteers made more than 150,000 calls last weekend, said Jim Alexander, the county GOP chairman.

Local observers say religious conservatives and anti-abortion activists are mounting powerful drives; thousands of copies of the Christian Coalition’s voter guide on the presidential candidates were distributed at Bush’s rally in Auburn Hills on Sunday.

Beyond its impact on the Electoral College, voting in Michigan should help answer some of the key questions on which the results will pivot around the nation. Among them:

* Can Clinton reclaim the so-called Reagan Democrats–the blue-collar ethnics who deserted the party during the 1970s and 1980s over taxes, the economy and the perception that Democrats favored minorities?

Stressing such issues as welfare reform and his support for the death penalty, Clinton has aggressively courted voters in Macomb County, a Detroit suburb renowned as the breeding ground of Reagan Democrats.

Republicans have fired back with targeted mailers hitting Clinton on trust and taxes. And Perot could be a formidable competitor in Macomb County and similar neighborhoods for the votes of working-class residents disgusted with Bush and the gridlock in Washington.

* Can Bush hold suburban Republicans and independents who favor abortion rights? Four years ago, he carried the generally affluent Detroit suburb of Oakland County by 109,000 votes. But the hard-right line on social issues at the Republican Convention did not play well there, and Democrats are optimistic that Clinton’s centrist message will allow him to make significant inroads, not only in Oakland County but in similar places in New Jersey, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

* Can Clinton get the high turnout he needs from blacks after a campaign so heavily focused on wooing white swing voters in the suburbs? The answer will affect the result not only here but in other industrial states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as Southern battlegrounds like Georgia and Louisiana.

* Will young voters show up today? One reason Clinton’s margin diminished in some national surveys last week is those polls included very few young people among their likely voters–and Clinton, the first baby boomer to top a national ticket, has been running very well with the young.

In 1988, just 36% of eligible voters age 18 to 24 actually turned out. Mike Dolan, field director for Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan national effort to register and turn out young voters, predicts as many as half of them may vote this year.

Such a spike in turnout would be a huge boost for Clinton; in this state, for example, he has courted students at rallies at both the University of Michigan and Michigan State University.

One cloud on the Democratic horizon is the possibility of rain today in Michigan and much of the Midwest. Conventional wisdom holds that rain could dampen turnout in Detroit and other urban centers and pinch Clinton’s vote.

But many on both sides believe that interest in this campaign is so high that even rain won’t cool it off. “With all of the attention to the race this year,” Alexander said, “I don’t know if even rain is going to matter.”

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a new state-run website Tuesday that tracks what his office calls the “criminal cronies” around President Trump — just the latest trolling tactic by the California governor that directly mirrors Trump’s own use of public resources for political score settling.

Newsom pegged the website’s rollout to recent crime statistics, which were released in early November showing falling rates of homicide and assault in California. The governor’s website catalogs what it calls the top 10 criminal convictions that were followed by pardons offered thus far by Trump — from Jan. 6 rioters to former politicians and business figures convicted of fraud, drug trafficking and financial crimes. The website calls Trump the “criminal in chief.”

The website features AI-generated portraits of such figues as Rod Blagojevich, the only Illinois governor to be impeached and removed from office; former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking; and Ross Ulbricht, the founder of a dark-web drug marketplace who had been serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. The images show the men standing in a lineup with the word “felon” stamped in red ink.

“With crime dropping — again — California is proving what real public safety leadership looks like,” read a statement from Newsom. “Meanwhile in D.C., Trump is a felon who surrounds himself with scammers and drug traffickers. We’re providing the public with a resource putting the facts in one place so Californians, and all Americans, can see who he elevates and who he protects.”

The launch is the latest escalation in Newsom’s increasingly aggressive digital campaign against Trump.

In recent months, the governor and his press office have turned social media into a near-daily forum for mocking and trolling the president by firing off all-caps posts, meme-style graphics and sharply worded rebukes aimed at Trump’s brash rhetoric, criminal record, policy proposals and political allies.

The crime data , which was released Nov. 3 by the Major Cities Chiefs Assn., found homicides across California’s major cities fell 18% year over year, robberies dropped 18% and aggravated assaults declined 9%. The association also found that violent crime decreased in every California city reporting data, with the steepest declines in Oakland, where violent crime fell 25%, and San Francisco, where it fell 21%.

Newsom’s new website highlights Trump’s sweeping use of presidential pardons to grant clemency to roughly 1,500 people charged or convicted for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The governor’s office said some of those individuals had prior criminal records and that others went on to be convicted of new crimes after receiving pardons.

The move mirrors tactics Trump and his administration have embraced. Most recently, Trump unveiled a website of “media offenders,” naming journalists and outlets he accuses of bias. Separately, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Kristi Noem has maintained a website highlighting what it calls the “worst of the worst” criminal immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, framing the page as evidence that the administration is carrying out Trump’s promise of mass deportations.

The state’s website launch comes as Newsom seeks to cast California as a national leader in responsible governance of artificial intelligence.

Earlier Tuesday, the governor announced a slate of initiatives aimed at promoting ethical AI use in state government, including a new advisory council, partnerships with academic and nonprofit groups, and a generative AI assistant for state employees. Among the priorities outlined are strengthening safeguards for children online, countering image-based abuse and improving government operations.

“California is at the forefront of AI technology — and is home to some of the most successful and innovative companies and academic leaders in the world,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re not going to sit on the sidelines and let others define the future for us. But we’re going to do it responsibly — making sure we capture the benefits, mitigate the harms, and continue to lead with the values that define this state.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $10 billion in damages from the BBC, accusing the British broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices.

The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

It accused the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” in order to “intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”

The lawsuit, filed in a Florida court, seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.

The BBC said it would defend the case.

“We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” it said in a statement.

The broadcaster apologized last month to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejected claims it had defamed him, after Trump threatened legal action.

BBC chairman Samir Shah had called it an “error of judgment,” which triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.

The speech took place before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.

The BBC had broadcast the hourlong documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Trump said earlier Monday that he was suing the BBC “for putting words in my mouth.”

“They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn’t say, and they’re beautiful words, that I said, right?” the president said unprompted during an appearance in the Oval Office. “They’re beautiful words, talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said. They didn’t say that, but they put terrible words.”

The president’s lawsuit was filed in Florida. Deadlines to bring the case in British courts expired more than a year ago.

Legal experts have brought up potential challenges to a case in the U.S. given that the documentary was not shown in the country.

The lawsuit alleges that people in the U.S. can watch the BBC’s original content, including the “Panorama” series, which included the documentary, by using the subscription streaming platform BritBox or a virtual private network service.

The 103-year-old BBC is a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by every household that watches live TV or BBC content. Bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial, it typically faces especially intense scrutiny and criticism from both conservatives and liberals.