Audit Finds More Presidential Work Happened on 18th Hole

Audit Finds More Presidential Work Took Place on the 18th Hole

FOIA crumbs, aerial photos, and deadpan math add up to an administration that governs by tee time.

A new audit released Monday by the Office of Executive Time Accounting (OETA) concluded that President Dalton logged more officially recorded hours on the 18th hole of Pebble Bay Golf Club than in the Situation Room during the 18‑month review period.

The report — compiled from 3,182 pages of FOIA disclosures, travel logs, Secret Service e‑briefs, and embarrassingly clear aerial photos of the presidential cart — uses nothing more sinister than timestamps and a ruler to reach its conclusion.

The deadpan ledger reads like a sports stat sheet.

• 18th hole (documented golf outings): 1,428 hours across 372 events.
• Situation Room (documented briefings): 1,142 hours across 409 events.
• Net difference: 286 more hours on the 18th hole (about 12 days, or precisely 5.9 long weekends).

Auditors call these "billed hours," meaning the tally includes time spent in transit, sunscreen application, and the 18 minutes commonly required to find a lost ball.

"We did not come to this work with a thesis," said Marla Finch, lead auditor at OETA. "We came with calendars, logs, satellite imagery, and a calculator that has seen things. The math is not subjective. The turf is."

The audit catalogues bureaucratic delights: calendar entries labeled "Greenside consultation (secure)," "Working tee time: trade talks," and an alarming number of "PDB (Par Development Briefing)" notations. Travel manifests show eighteen separate motorcades that rolled from the West Wing to the clubhouse with the solemnity usually reserved for cabinet meetings.

Security logs, ever useful for the theater of power, record 412 "cart departure/return" entries linked to the 18th green versus 389 "secure sweep" entries for the Situation Room. The spreadsheet also notes average meeting lengths: golf meetings clock in at 127 minutes; briefings average 52.

Republican and Democratic critics (and bored statisticians) both described the results as "governing by tee time." Aides inside the complex quietly suggested moving the Situation Room's coordinates to the clubhouse fairway to avoid confusion.

White House spokespeople framed the audit as a question of semantics and stamina.

"The president governs where governance is necessary," said Jayden Cruz, White House communications director. "If that happens to be on fairways, so be it. Also, the 18th hole has excellent Wi‑Fi."

The audit's recommendations are usefully specific and quietly petty: standardize calendar labels ("Briefing—S.R." vs "Briefing—Bunker"); require receipt uploads for beverage cart expenses; and add a digital flag so the public can no longer mistake a mulligan for a multilateral negotiation.

The report's final footnote reads like a punchline: an annotated scorecard where one line item, "urgent national matter," has been lovingly crossed out and replaced with "mulligan."

At press time, the president reportedly asked whether the Situation Room comes with a caddie. Because life needs a stronger flavor.