Donald Trump's 2014 tweet about Barack Obama comes back to bite him

President Donald Trump. Photo / AP

Another of Donald Trump's old tweets has come back to bite him.

The US President this weekend played golf for the first time since he declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency more than two months ago.

His return to the course on Saturday was the latest sign that he wants the country back to pre-outbreak times, even as the US death toll from the virus nears 100,000 which is twice what he once predicted it would be.

President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2014

But the President has been accused of hypocrisy after a handful of tweets from 2014 resurfaced.

Trump levied frequent criticism of Barack Obama's regular golf outings when he was president.

"Can you believe that with all of the problems and difficulties facing the US, President Obama spent the day playing golf. Worse than Carter," Trump tweeted in October 2014 during the ebola epidemic in West Africa.

In an interview on Fox and Friends around the same time, Trump criticised then-president Obama for his love of playing golf, saying: "When you're president, you sort of say, like, 'I'm gonna give it up for a few years and I'm gonna really focus on the job'.

Trump is golfing today.

In 2014 on Fox and Friends he criticized Obama for golfing when there were *two cases* of Ebola in the United States saying, "it sends the wrong signal" and he should have given up golf as president "to really focus on the job." https://t.co/br8jLwVLts pic.twitter.com/Jmh5CSt2mp

— andrew kaczynski🤔 (@KFILE) May 23, 2020

If today is like yesterday, 216 Americans will die of coronavirus while Trump plays golf. pic.twitter.com/0hmrHDh42x

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) May 23, 2020

Trump added: "There are times to play and there are times that you can't play and it sends the wrong signal."

Nearly 100,000 lives have been lost, and tens of millions are out of work.

Meanwhile, the president spent his day golfing. pic.twitter.com/H1BVNtgVjA

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 24, 2020

As US deaths approach 100,000, Trump disputes the numbers and plays golf.

This isn't leadership. It's criminal negligence. https://t.co/s6rKq2Qfm2

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) May 23, 2020

Trump's golf outing this weekend came a day after Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force co-ordinator, said that it was okay for people to be outdoors this weekend as long as they took appropriate safety precautions.

Trump pulled away from the White House on a sunny morning wearing a white polo shirt, white cap and dark slacks.

Photographs showed him swinging a golf club and driving alone in a cart on the course at his private Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.

The White House had no comment on the President's activities at the club, but said he and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had discussed the pandemic's effect on the global economy on Saturday.

The golf trip was Mr Trump's first visit to one of his money-making properties since March 8, when he visited his private golf club in West Palm Beach during a weekend at his Florida home.