From golf to cycling Donald Trump’s history with sport is tale of cheating, failure and feuds

Trump lost a lawsuit against the NFL while a USFL team owner then saw his Tour De Trump cycling race fall flat

The US president has called for sport to return amid coronavirus spread despite feuding with major leagues and star athletes

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US president Donald Trump shows off his form at his golf course in Jupiter, Florida. Photo: AP

Published: 1:47pm, 16 Apr 2020Updated: 3:35pm, 17 Apr 2020

According to legend, Roman emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Notwithstanding the fact that violins were only invented 1,500 years after the summer of 64AD, Nero was a keen musician and the idea of him strumming his cithara while those fires raged for six days, burning 70 per cent of the city and leaving half of the population homeless, has lasted nearly 2,000 years.

It’s also been given a new lease of life this month with an image of a violin-playing Donald Trump being shared by White House press secretary Dan Scavino. It was captioned “My next piece is called ... Nothing can stop what’s coming”. The US president retweeted it with the comment, “Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me!”

It sounded good to his detractors, too. The image was then widely shared on social media where comparisons with Nero came thick and fast.

Others have pointed out that Trump is more likely to hit the fairway than the fiddle – the president has picked up his golf clubs a number of times during the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

American Bridge 21st Century, a liberal Super PAC, has even splashed out on adverts in working class areas of Michigan and Pennsylvania to highlight Trump’s taking to the tees, even after enacting travel restrictions to and from China at the end of January.