Tracking Trump: turkey pardons and teeing off with Tiger Woods

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In another busy week, the president feuds with LaVar Ball, defends Roy Moore, and faces ominous news in the Russia inquiry – but finds time for golf

• Each week, Trump seems to make more news than most presidents do in a lifetime. The Guardian is keeping track of it all in this series, every Saturday

Faced with a quiet moment, Donald Trump tends to stir up a spat with a sports star or a celebrity, seemingly in order to open new fronts in America’s “culture wars” and reassure his base about which side he’s on. When it comes to sports, Trump’s targets are often African American, and he pursued a few such targets this week.

Regular readers may remember that when last week the president asked China to free three UCLA basketball players accused of shoplifting, his main concern was that the players would thank him, which they did. But when LaVar Ball, the father of one of the arrested players and an inveterate attention seeker himself, questioned just how critical a role Trump actually played, it enraged the president. “I should have left them in jail!” he tweeted on Sunday, adding six hours later that he “should have gotten his son [LiAngelo Ball] out during my next trip to China instead … Very ungrateful!”

Trump – whose sons Donald Jr and Eric are well-known hunters – also gave more clues about his perhaps surprisingly critical views on the US Fish and Wildlife Service plan to allow imports of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia, tweeting: “Big-game trophy decision will be announced next week but will be very hard pressed to change my mind that this horror show in any way helps conservation of Elephants or any other animal.”

Returning to his racially tinged offensive, Trump singled out Marshawn Lynch of the Oakland Raiders for sitting down during the playing of The Star-Spangled Banner. “Great disrespect!” tweeted the president, adding another dog whistle for the base when he pointed out that Lynch had stood up “for the Mexican anthem”. Black athletes have been protesting during the national anthem since the summer, to highlight police violence and racial injustice.

Tuesday

Sexual misconduct accusations against the Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore are a less divisive issue, at least outside Alabama – Moore has been condemned widely, including by numerous GOP figures. But after some prevaricating Trump came down on the candidate’s side. Asked the memorable question “Is Roy Moore, [allegedly] a child molester, better than a Democrat?”, Trump pointed out that Moore denied the claims against him, one of which involves a woman who was 14 at the time, and said: “I can tell you one thing for sure: we don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat.” Trump has himself been accused by numerous women of sexual harassment. He denies the claims.

His stance prompted a rare show of unity from New York’s fiercely rivalrous tabloids:

As Thanksgiving approached, Trump took part in the tradition of pardoning a couple of turkeys, with the White House Instagram account asking beforehand: “Which turkey should President Trump pardon?” Reports that Donald Trump Jr, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort were madly refreshing the page could not be confirmed at press time.

Wednesday

After getting up bright and early to resume his feuds with Ball and the kneeling NFL players, Trump informed his Twitter followers he would be “having meetings and working the phones from the Winter White House in Florida (Mar-a-Lago)”.

(Donald, stop trying to make “Winter White House” happen – it’s not going to happen.)

A White House spokesperson, however, was less on-message, telling press travelling with the president she expected a “low-key day”, according to the pool report shared by journalists. Within minutes, a correction arrived: “While the White House communications staff expects the press pool to have a ‘low-key day’, the president will NOT have a low-key day and has a full schedule of meetings and phone calls.”

Just over an hour later, the Trump motorcade set off from Mar-a-Lago, arriving at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach at 9.26am.

Various parts of the White House and Republican party had a similarly full schedule, in their case plugging various bits of Trump-related Christmas merch:

Thursday

Trump made a Thanksgiving visit to Coast Guard Station Lake Worth Inlet in Florida, handing out sandwiches and asking one musclebound fellow if he could beat him at arm wrestling.

He then spent four hours at his golf club, before heading back to Mar-a-Lago for a Thanksgiving meal with friends and family. The menu included “turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes w marshmallows, a variety of baked goods, local produce and cheeses, red snapper and Florida stone crab”, according to Melania’s spokeswoman. “Dessert includes various cakes and pies,” she added.

But the worries of the world intruded with reports that lawyers for the former national security adviser Michael Flynn have stopped working with Trump’s team, suggesting Flynn may now be cooperating with the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election and any links to Trump’s campaign. If true, that could be a worrying sign for the president.

Friday

Trump returned to the golf course on Friday at just after 9am, this time in the company of the professionals Tiger Woods and Dustin Johnson – and unusually, he admitted as much on Twitter, perhaps unable to resist the name-drops. The president was careful, however, to make clear he would not spend the whole day on the green.

“I will be heading over to Trump National Golf Club, Jupiter, to play golf (quickly) with Tiger Woods and Dustin Johnson,” he tweeted. “Then back to Mar-a-Lago for talks on bringing even more jobs and companies back to the USA!” He wrapped up at about 1.30pm, spending a similar amount of time there as he had the previous two days.

“I play golf to relax,” Trump said in one of many tweets slamming Barack Obama’s golf habit in 2011. “My company is in great shape. @BarackObama plays golf to escape work while America goes down the drain.”

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