Commander in Cheat - by Rick Reilly (Paperback)

About the Book

A sportswriter's indictment of how Trump's golf habits reflect his off-the-course ethics draws on personal experience and witness interviews to reveal how he feels Trump lies, intimidates, and files lawsuits to get away with rampant cheating.

Book Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "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 "Golf is the spine of this shocking, wildly humorous book, but humanity is its flesh and spirit." -- Chicago Sun-Times "Every one of Trump's most disgusting qualities surfaces in golf." -- The Ringer 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.

Review Quotes

"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

"Commander in Cheat is one of the most surprising pieces of muckraking of the Trump era....Reilly's right to say Trump sees a golf course like he does the Oval Office...Every one of Trump's most disgusting qualities surfaces in golf."--The Ringer

"[Commander in Cheat] is filled with vivid allegations about Trump's cheating -- how he once threw broadcaster Mike Tirico's ball off the green during a round, how he manipulates the value of his courses to get tax breaks, how he exaggerates his golf scores."--The Washington Post

"A hilarious and well-researched indictment of President Trump and his golf game....Mr. Reilly, probably the most acclaimed sports writer of his generation, details and highlights in incredulous and often times comical fashion...'The Donald, ' both before and after he became the nation's 45th president."--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"A must-read for Democrats and Republicans alike."
--DelcoTimes

"An eye-watering account of the president's abuse of the rules of golf....[an] unrelenting hatchet job."
--The Times (London)

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

"Brilliant...Very, very funny when it comes to the details of what Donald Trump does....[Commander in Cheat is] the great Father's Day Book."--Laurence O'Donnell, MSNBC's The Last Word

"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

"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)

"Eye-popping."--Los Angeles Times

"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

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

"I laughed uncontrollably."--Ottawa Citizen

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

"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

"Renowned sports columnist Reilly...has known the president for 30 years...If Reilly was once a Trump favorite, he no longer will be...[An] amusing, entertaining assessment of a congenital liar."--Kirkus Reviews

"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

"Stunning -- and damning."--Golf Digest

"The latest anti-Trump exposé isn't about Russia collusion, his taxes or his tweets. It's about his favorite pastime....Delve[s] into allegations the president isn't always honest out on the course."--Fox News

"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

"There's a new tell-all book about the president...The specific anecdotes are where Commander in Cheat really takes off."--Stephen Colbert, TheLate Show

"This richly researched expose hilariously pulled down The Donald's golf pants and would have humiliated a normal human. Chapter after chapter reveals the myriad ways Trump egregiously cheats at every conceivable aspect of golf."
--The Colorado Sun

"[Reilly uses] a scalpel rather than an axe to carve Trump up.... All of the sins are nicely researched and chronicled...very well done."--BuffaloSportsPage.com

"Donald Trump's history as an alleged cheater at golf is brilliantly told in Reilly's Commander in Cheat."--Irish Examiner

"[A] classic work of nonfiction....The book's tales of cheating are incredible... but those of his grit are even more staggering."--The 42

"The gifted writer Rick Reilly... did us a great favor by writing a book about how Trump cheats at golf....[Reilly] points out how big an embarrassment Trump is to a sport that values honesty and integrity more than any other."--Northern Kentucky Tribune

About the Author

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 also 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."