As World Leaders Meet to Talk Pandemic, Trump Checks Out and Hits the Links

The president dropped off the G-20 virtual summit after his own remarks.

President Donald Trump plays golf at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

Donald Trump briefly attended a virtual world summit Saturday morning—long enough to brag about himself—and then returned to spending his morning as he does on any other weekend: golfing and tweeting.

The annual Group of 20 meeting was set to be hosted in Saudi Arabia this year, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, global leaders have been meeting virtually this weekend. The virtual format has created some weirdness—like the familiar-to-most-Americans-by-now collage of faces on a screen virtually “meeting,” but populated by Russian president Vladimir Putin, Saudi King Salman, and Chinese president Xi Jinping—but it’s also drastically lowered the bar for how much effort a world leader needs to make to attend. Trump managed several minutes, and mainly the part in which he got to speak. And even that was weird.

According to audio obtained by the Observer newspaper, Trump opened by talking about how he plans on attending the meeting again, although he will leave office on January 20 and it’s a meeting for world leaders.

“It’s been a great honor to work with you, and I look forward to working with you again for a long time,” Trump reportedly said. He also falsely took credit for the development of two potential COVID-19 vaccines through his administration’s Operation Warp Speed. According to the Observer, no other world leader discussed their own domestic politics, and the majority of comments were focused on the global crisis and how to stop it. Bloomberg also reports that “[u]nlike other leaders, Trump did not speak of the need to share vaccines around the world, especially with poorer nations. He also urged fellow leaders to reject lockdown measures as a tool to control the virus, one official said.”

Trump left the meeting after he spoke, as British prime minister Boris Johnson was speaking. Although a number of other leaders also left the meeting after delivering comments, Trump is the only one who took to Twitter to start tweeting, in all-caps, about conspiracy theories.

Trump also promoted a web television program:

A number of leaders, including German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron, returned to the virtual summit after the opening session to discuss the global handling of the pandemic more specifically. Trump instead was spotted heading towards the golf course, his 303rd visit to a golf course since he took office. 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate