ROLLING ID:

Few props have been more indispensable to Donald Trump's presidency than the golf cart. He drives them on his frequent weekend trips to the links (invariably at Trump-owned clubs, where he rolls onto the greens, too--normally a no-no). During his visit to Saudi Arabia in May, rather than walk, the president hopped a ride in a cart as he toured the National Museum in Riyadh. And a few days later, while six other world leaders at a G-7 summit in Sicily walked 700 yards up a slight hill to a photo-op, Trump followed behind for at least part of the way in, yes, another golf cart.

The images of Trump in his carts--at the wheel, wearing a "MAGA" hat on the golf course, or suited and solemn in Saudi Arabia--resonate strongly with Jack O'Donnell, an executive who worked for Trump in Atlantic City. It was 28 years ago--right after a helicopter crash killed three of Trump's executives--that Trump told O'Donnell, who often trained for triathlons, that exercise was going to ruin his body. "He told me you've got to stop that," O'Donnell told me. "He really believed we only have so much energy, that it was important not to waste it."

When O'Donnell, who in 1991 published a tell-all book about working with Trump, watches Trump putter along in his vehicle of choice, he doesn't see a man conserving energy but a man who is unfit for office. As in, literally, physically unfit. "It says to me that he is in horrible shape and he knows it," O'Donnell said. "He'd walk if he could, but he knows he can't keep up with the group, so he rides the cart instead." [...]

By any measure, America's president is overweight, and medical experts say it could be affecting his health and his job. In Saudi Arabia, after Trump deviated from the prepared text of a speech, an aide explained that the president was "exhausted." 

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