How Trump and His Famous Golfer Buddy Are Trying to Sportswash the Presidency

The Soft Power American

Bryson DeChambeau has a lot of power. If you’re unfamiliar with him, then, as The Dude says: “obviously you are not a golfer.” He has won two US Opens, famously the hardest test in golf, but is most known for being able to hit a golf ball farther than just about anyone on the planet and for his YouTube channel which has nearly 3 million followers. He plays on the LIV Golf tour — a breakaway league bankrolled by the Saudi Public Investment Fund and thought by many to be an attempt by the Saudi government to “sportswash” the country’s image and poor record on human rights — where he is far and away the most popular player. He is also close with President Trump, and was appointed chair of the president’s fitness council. Just last week, DeChambeau was competing in a push-up contest on the White House lawn and joined the president in the Oval Office to announce the reinstatement of the Presidential Fitness Test — an event that occurred coincidentally only a few days after the Saudis announced they would no longer be funding LIV Golf.

If Trump, who famously eschews physical exercise because he believes in the battery theory of the body, seems an unusual champion for the Presidential Fitness Test, that’s because fitness is unlikely to be where he is focused. Tellingly, in his first term he signed an executive order to move “sports” ahead of “fitness” in the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition — the administrative body charged with promoting healthy lifestyles and, until Obama retired it, administering the fitness test. Few know better than Trump what connections in the sports world can do to bolster your reputation and expand your business opportunities. And while Trump’s dalliance with the UFC might have helped put him back in the White House, his true love has always been golf. In DeChambeau, he may have found the perfect playing partner.

Known early in his career as a mad scientist for playing the game according to calculations that broke with golf’s orthodoxies, DeChambeau’s approach to the game both intrigued fans and players and rubbed them the wrong way. Unable to break through in the biggest tournaments due to what he saw as a lack of distance, he radically transformed his body and swing to become the longest hitter in the game. These changes drew increased attention and helped him win the US Open in 2020. However, while more people were certainly watching, he didn’t seem to be winning many of them over. Speaking with reporters after his US Open win, he seemed unable to articulate what the achievement meant to him and instead took the time to thank his many sponsors. When a reporter asked what the word was on his father’s shirt, DeChambeau said, “volition”, which appeared to be a profound moment until he went on to explain that it was part of Puma’s Freedom line. 

After his US Open win, DeChambeau was the biggest name in golf. He was like a real life Happy Gilmore who had all the shots — and could putt. But unlike Happy Gilmore, the huge crowds that followed him seemed more interested in taunting him than cheering for him. Frustrated with his life and image on the PGA Tour, DeChambeau started posting behind-the-scenes content to YouTube — a move that apparently ruffled the feathers of some of the Tour’s higher-ups. When it was announced that Saudi Arabia would be bankrolling a new tour designed to highlight the more fun aspects of the game over stiff country club traditions (“Golf, but louder”), DeChambeau was among the first big name players to leave the PGA tour and join — reportedly signing a contract worth $125 million.

Players who left for LIV became pariahs to the PGA Tour and were questioned by the media about the morality of accepting such enormous sums of money from a country known for its human rights abuses. Most players would avoid the subject, instead repeating the litany on the importance of “growing the game.” DeChambeau did his best to defend his employer. In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlin Collins, he called reports implicating Saudi Arabia in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi “unfortunate.” He went on to make the case that the Saudis are trying to be better allies and ended by suggesting that “nobody is perfect.” For DeChambeau, the partnership with the Saudis was working. He was allowed to focus on his YouTube channel where he promoted LIV Golf and had started building a large following by leaning into the tactics used by popular social media influencers. When he won the US Open again in 2024, he was the crowd favorite.

After the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, Trump too found himself a pariah in the world of traditional golf. And like DeChambeau, he found a home in LIV. When the board of the PGA Championship voted to move the 2022 tournament away from Trump’s Bedminster golf club, he invited the upstart LIV to host a tournament there instead. Trump has since been a vocal proponent of the league, helping them break into the American market by hosting and attending a number of tournaments at his golf courses along the East Coast. It is somewhat ironic, then, that the financial impact of the Iran war Trump started might have been a factor in Saudi Arabia finally deciding to pull the plug on the league.

It’s estimated that the country has already sunk $6 billion dollars into the league and profitability, if that was ever the goal, is nowhere on the horizon. Despite this, DeChambeau was rumored to be seeking a contract extension in the ballpark of $500 million dollars. While preparing for last week’s LIV event at Trump National Golf Club in D.C., DeChambeau told ESPN reporter Mark Schlabach that he was “shocked” by Saudi Arabia’s decision. When Schlabach asked DeChambeau what he would do if LIV folded, he said he would focus on growing his YouTube channel rather than try to rejoin the PGA tour.

To get a sense of what it might look like for one of the top golfers in the world to forsake his legacy to pursue a career as a content creator, you can go to DeChambeau’s YouTube page. His top video is one he filmed last year with President Trump at Bedminster. It’s part of a series where he and a guest play a round of team golf, each hitting a shot from the same place and taking the better of the two shots until the hole is finished. In the video, Trump proves himself a capable golfer. DeChambeau regularly commends the president for his drives and approach shots, while, with a few notable exceptions, the pair decide to take DeChambeau’s shot on nearly every occasion. Riding around in a presidential golf cart, the two talk about Elvis, trees, and their love of golf. On the 18th hole, after Trump sinks a long birdie putt to tie the all-time series record, DeChambeau falls on his back smiling up at the unexpected result. He can’t believe what just happened. He’s just hoping that you can. 

The Trump Admin Flexes Its Storytelling Skills to Sidestep Iran War Authorization

Since President Donald Trump started to wage war against Iran more than two months ago — seemingly without much logistical or financial planning — the administration has been sidestepping seeking congressional authorization for the war they started by continuously changing the narrative.

President Donald Trump did not ask for congressional authorization before initiating hostilities. Congressional Republicans explained away the absence of an authorization, saying the 1973 War Powers Resolution makes it so that the president does not need to ask for permission for up to 60 days. When the 60-day clock was about to be up, the administration started claiming a supposed ceasefire with Iran stopped the 60-day clock, therefore, they said, making an authorization request irrelevant. That’s a legally dubious claim that experts called “absurd.” 

Seemingly, in an attempt to continue evading the 60-day clock, the Pentagon is now reportedly planning to rename the war with Iran “Operation Sledgehammer” if Trump decides to restart major combat operations. 

The existence of an ongoing ceasefire is also very much a question mark. The Trump administration has claimed over and over again that Iran has agreed to a ceasefire even as the U.S. continues its naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, two weeks ago Pentagon officials estimated the cost of Iran to be $25 billion in total. This week, the war that the Trump administration is claiming to have ended, is estimated to cost around $29 billion.

Meanwhile, other estimates have indicated a much higher cost of the ongoing war.

The price tag is closer to $50 billion — almost double the estimate Pentagon publicly shared at the end of April — according to officials familiar with internal assessments who spoke with CBS News. Other independent tallies have found even the $50 billion estimate to be more than $20 billion short.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sneered at the idea that he’d need to provide “formal accounting on the cost” of the war in a congressional hearing this week — just another attempt from the Trump admin to ignore and stomp on Congress’ power of the purse. It is, of course, Congress’ job to oversee federal spending.

Why Are We Surprised That Gen Z Doesn’t Like AI?

Gloria Caulfield certainly didn’t seem to expect the reaction she got during her commencement address. In a booster-y May 8 speech that quickly went viral, she told an audience from the University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities and Nicholson School of Communication and Media — fields that are acutely threatened by the rise of AI — that AI will herald “the next industrial revolution.” Caulfield, who works as a VP at a real estate firm, was met with raucous boos. “AI sucks!” one audience member called out.  

“I’m embarrassed to have had to endure the most embarrassing, unskippable, tone-deaf, ad-like commencement,” Houda Eletr, one of the graduating students in attendance, later told the Orlando Weekly. “Boo to AI and boo to your agenda.”

Maybe Caulfield should’ve talked to a college student before writing her speech. As Blood in the Machine’s Brian Merchant points out, since the uptick in AI use began in earnest with the rollout of ChatGPT in 2023, polling has consistently shown that Americans are more concerned than excited about the technology, and their view of it has dimmed as their use of it increases. While young people are more likely to say they use AI, engaging with chatbots, for schoolwork, or at their jobs, they also harbor particular antipathy towards it. A March 2026 NBC poll found that AI’s net favorability rating among respondents aged 18-34 was -44.

So why are young people using this technology they say they dislike so much? At the risk of becoming TPM’s resident Youth Defender, it’s worth pointing out that AI is being force-fed to young people from a very early age. EdWeek’s Research Center reports that more than half of teachers are incorporating AI into instruction in some way. As she moves to dismantle her own department, Education Secretary Linda McMahon is working to expand AI use in classrooms, making it a grantmaking priority. WIRED reports that “Google, Apple, and Microsoft have competed for years to get their tools into schools in hopes of turning children into lifelong users.” We’ve all read stories bemoaning today’s lazy youth for using it to write essays for them or cheat on schoolwork, but I personally blame the multi-billion dollar tech behemoths forcing this technology into our curricula and the school districts rushing to adapt it in elementary and middle schools more than your average student.

And outside the classroom, AI is becoming unavoidable. It’s integrated into so many platforms and so much technology we use. Social media is drowning in AI slop. Google Docs and Gmail push Gemini autocompletes on you, and you’re served a potentially incorrect AI summary every time you do a basic Google search. 

Meanwhile, Gen Z is acutely aware that they will be affected by AI-related job loss. Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and Stanford University show that AI is erasing entry-level jobs, especially in fields like software development, consulting, accounting, finance, and customer service, eliminating opportunities for Gen Z to gain essential experience. Students and graduates are watching major employers like Amazon, UPS, Target, IBM and Meta slash thousands of jobs as they embrace automation. 

So, yeah, Gloria Caulfield, the kids can see what’s happening! As BITM’s Merchant succinctly puts it, “The more people use AI, the less they like it, and the more concerned they are.” 

From TPM’s Group Chat

No Words

This Effing Guy

Of all the Southern politicians vying to erase the Black vote in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry may be emerging as the most ghoulish. He was the first lawmaker to call for new maps, just hours after the ruling came down. He has, with a straight face, talked about Louisiana now being “unshackled from the decades of litigation,” and breezily dismissed concerns about tossing out 42,000 primary votes that were already cast in Louisiana as “not my fault.” And then the guy had the gall to ask for “civility” and “respect” from protesters as the legislature moved forward on votes for new maps that will obliterate Black voting power in the state.

Words of Wisdom

“The fertility crisis for women began in 2007; for men in 1970. Men had twice the sperm count as our teenagers do today. This is an existential crisis for our country.”

– RFK Jr. 

Trivia Time

Which top Trump administration officials (yes, plural) resigned this week?

What leisure activity did FBI Director Kash Patel engage in while he was definitely not on vacation in Hawaii last summer: a) jetskiing b) snorkeling or c) parasailing

Which Southern state determined it would not move forward with plans to redraw its map before the 2026 midterms, then abruptly reversed course? 

TPM in the Wild

Kate Riga and Josh Marshall joined the Heather Cox Richardson for a live conversation on the past and future of independent media and what it’s like to cover politics now. Some fun tidbits: Kate’s first journalism job was as a reporter for the East Hampton Star and Heather has been a TPM reader since Day 1.

Kate also joined the Brad Friedman show to talk about the need for Democrats to engage in some norm-breaking if we ever hope to restore and repair American democracy. As Kate put it, “The ultimate aims of the parties are diametrically different. So if you have to do some of this norm-breaking and act a little Republican-y on the route to restoring civic democracy, I think that has to be worth it. Because again, what is the alternative? Just the authoritarian slide, right?”

Trivia Answers: 1) FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks 2) Snorkeling 3) South Carolina