What did Donald Trump do today?

He decided golf was too important for him to worry about obeying court orders.

In a social media post today, Trump went on at great length about his plans to bulldoze the existing East Potomac Park's golf courses and put a new course in its place, one that he believes will allow the facility to host major golf tournaments. (Trump, who owns dozens of courses and has repeatedly tried to strong-arm professional golf organizations into paying him to host tournaments, did not say why it was in the interests of the American people to have the government get into the same business.)

There are two problems with the announcement. First, while Trump said that the new course would eventually be "open to the Public," as opponents quickly noted, what Trump is actually doing is reducing the number of golf courses from two to one, and taking that remaining course well out of reach of the everyday crowd that currently plays there. The plan also effectively ruins the park as a park, taking away family-friendly attractions like a popular mini-golf course and miles of hiking and biking trails.

Second, Trump said that work would begin on November 15. That would not only violate a court order already in place blocking further demolition of the existing facilities, but it would mean that Trump was now going back on a court document filed less than two days before, in which the DOJ promised that "at most" he was only engaging in "preliminary thought" about destroying the course.

Trump has already violated court orders about the course. Last week, in a coordinated and pre-planned effort, Trump's DOJ made a last-minute Friday night filing as an excuse to cut down more than 400 historic cherry trees on the course before the judge in the case could respond with a denial. 

Trump's social media post went on at length about the supposedly atrocious and dangerous conditions of the course—something he's also falsely claimed about places that virtually any other American would call beautiful and luxurious, like the Kennedy Center or Camp David or the White House itself.

But there is a grain of truth to his claims that the park in its current state needs some long-term care: it's where he dumped the rubble from the destruction of the East Wing of the White House. That debris is now leaching toxic heavy metals into the soil and water.

Why does this matter?

• Either a president submits to the rule of law like every other American, or he's a wannabe dictator.

• Public golf courses exist precisely because there are Americans who want to play golf who'd never be allowed to set foot on the kinds of courses Trump owns.
  
  
• There are much, much more important problems for the United States of America at the moment than not having a championship golf course in East Potomac Park.