Commander in Cheat, Rick Reilly
Commander in Cheat, Rick Reilly
8 Rating(s)
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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Commander in Cheat
How Golf Explains Trump

Bestseller

Author: Rick Reilly

Narrator: Rick Reilly

Unabridged: 7 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/02/2019

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAn outrageous indictment of Donald Trump's appalling behavior when it comes to golf—on and off the green—and what it reveals about his character."Reilly pokes more holes in Trump's claims than there are sand traps on all of his courses combined. It is by turns amusing and alarming." —The New Yorker Donald Trump loves golf. He loves to play it, buy it, build it, and operate it. He owns 14 courses around the world and runs another five, all of which he insists are the best on the planet. He also claims he's a 3 handicap, almost never loses, and has won an astonishing 18 club championships. How much of all that is true? Almost none of it, acclaimed sportswriter Rick Reilly reveals in this unsparing look at Trump in the world of golf. Based on Reilly's own experiences with Trump as well as interviews with over 100 golf pros, amateurs, developers, and caddies, Commander in Cheat is a startling and at times hilarious indictment of Trump and his golf game. You'll learn how Trump cheats (sometimes with the help of his caddies and Secret Service agents), lies about his scores (the "Trump Bump"), tells whoppers about the rank of his courses and their worth (declaring that every one of them is worth $50 million), and tramples the etiquette of the game (driving on greens doesn't help). Trump doesn't brag so much, though, about the golf contractors he stiffs, the course neighbors he intimidates, or the way his golf decisions wind up infecting his political ones. For Trump, it's always about winning. To do it, he uses the tricks he picked up from the hustlers at the public course where he learned the game as a college kid, and then polished as one of the most bombastic businessmen of our time. As Reilly writes, "Golf is like bicycle shorts. It reveals a lot about a man." Commander in Cheat "paints a side-splitting portrait of a congenital cheater" (Esquire), revealing all kinds of unsightly truths Trump has been hiding.

About Rick Reilly

Currently a screenwriter and author, Rick Reilly for years wrote for Sports Illustrated and appeared on and wrote for ESPN. In addition to being voted the NSMA National Sportswriter of the Year eleven times, he has been recognized with the Damon Runyon Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. USA Today called him, "the closest thing sportswriting ever had to a rock star."

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jon on January 21, 2023

This was a very interesting perspective on president Trump and how he plays golf. I truly do believe that you can tell much about the character of a person based on the way they interact when competing in any type of endeavor. If the allegations in this book are true (some or all) then I think it br......more

Goodreads review by Erin on April 09, 2019

I couldn't put this book down. Amazon delivered it yesterday afternoon and I spent all evening at my local watering hole devouring this book. I've never picked up a golf club or been a fan of Donald Trump but I've read books on both topics and this book takes the cake. Rick Reilly uses golf's Trump......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on May 15, 2024

Rick Reilly is a reward winning American sports writer who became well known as the back page columnist of Sports Illustrated before moving to ESPN, where he wrote an opinion column and hosted a television interview series. Here he shares – brutally – his views on The Donald as a golfer and as a man......more

Goodreads review by Mara on April 07, 2019

I really enjoyed the project of this book-- rather than dive into the maddening hand-wave-ium that typical critiques of Trump's character devolve into (e.g. "who cares if he's a philanderer, don't all politicians do that," "all rich people lie about how much money they have," "he's just using colorf......more

Goodreads review by Kurt on May 28, 2019

Rick Reilly loves golf. It's one of the most important things in his life. He's written numerous books about it. And now the sitting president is spending a third of his time at the golf course sullying golf's good name by breaking as many rules as he can get away with. And Reilly is not having it. M......more

Quotes

"Golf is the spine of this shocking, wildly humorous book, but humanity is its flesh and spirit....It's all hilarious in Reilly's gifted hands."—Chicago Sun-Times

"The American sportswriting great has written my favorite sports book of 2019...By turns hilarious and shocking. In a game that prides itself on gentlemanly conduct, Trump is exposed by numerous witnesses (most of whom are surprisingly happy to go on the record, a tribute to Reilly's reporting skills) as a first-class cheat....I thought my opinion of the 45th president could not get any lower. I was wrong."—The Times (London), Sports Book of the Year

"Relying on testimony from playing partners, caddies, and former Trump employees, Reilly pokes more holes in Trump's claims than there are sand traps on all of his courses combined. It is by turns amusing and alarming....P.G. Wodehouse would have approved."—The New Yorker

"Commander in Cheat is an incredibly creative book, regardless what you think of President Trump, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum. It takes us places behind the press conferences and the staged interviews....It take us into Trump's past, places where there were no cameras, no speech writers, no handlers, no aides. It is just Donald Trump with his appetites, Donald Trump with his excesses, Donald Trump with his flaws. Donald Trump with both his love for golf, and his propensity to play games with the truth."—The Providence Journal

"Building on his firsthand experience by interviewing scores of golf pros, caddies, and opponents, Reilly paints a side-splitting portrait of a congenital cheater."—Esquire, Most Anticipated Books of the Year

"Assails Trump's 'ethics deficit.'"
—Associated Press

"Reilly uses golf to reveal larger truths. Or, in this case, lies."
—The Arizona Republic

"Diamonds among the divots - [one of] the best golf books ever written....It was not exactly a secret that Trump plays fast and loose with the rules, but Reilly's catalogue of his moral failures takes the breath away....Hilarious and rather alarming stuff."—The Times (UK)

"Great writing...If you really don't like Trump, this is your perfect book."—Chris Matthews, MSNBC's Hardball

"Sportswriting can be a lens into any part of our culture, and [Commander in Cheat] proves my point... a clever way to make sense of White House chaos."—The Week,Books to Read in 2019

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