There has never really been an instance, at least since his foray into politics, that Donald Trump hasn’t been criticized. But ever since he took office in January, the President has been specifically called out for burning taxpayers’ money on his golfing trips to Florida.
A report published in early March revealed that he had taken 6 trips to the golf course he owns in the coastal state. But how much does each golfing trip that Donald Trump takes cost? To set the ball rolling, the expenses on Air Force One, which encompasses everything from fuelling up to fully staffing the presidential jet, come up to approximately $200,00 an hour.
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Apart from that, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, which assists the Secret Service with manpower and resources to protect President Donald Trump, reportedly charges a daily overtime bill of $240,000.
All said and done, a daily roundtrip to and from Donald Trump’s beloved golf courses in Florida costs taxpayers around a million dollars once the expenses made on the additional cargo flight, which carries the President’s motorcade, and the Marine One helicopter, which ferries him from the White House to Joint Base Andrews, are factored in.
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In 2019, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that federal agencies spent an average of $13.6 million on each of Donald Trump’s 4 trips to Mar-a-Lago after his inauguration in 2017. To put things in order, Trump spent 4 of the first 7 weekends that immediately followed his 2017 inauguration in Florida. This time around, the tally has already come up to 6!
Amid the criticism, Donald Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to announce that he had just won a golf championship. The post read, “I just won the Golf Club Championship, probably my last, at Trump International Golf Club, in Palm Beach County, Florida. Such a great honor! The Awards dinner is tonight, at the Club. I want to thank the wonderful Golf Staff, and all of the many fantastic golfers, that participated in the even. Such fun!”
Commenting on Donald Trump’s visits to his golf courses, Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said, “We start with the clear principle that presidents are entitled to Secret Service protection wherever they go, and have their transportation covered. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that when he does any of the things he does. However, there are serious issues. One is that he maintained ownership of his businesses, so this is not a question of going to the president’s house; it’s going to the president’s business where payment is made directly to a business that benefits the president.”
“We want the presidency to be the main focus of the president. That’s not to say presidents don’t have time to recharge and take a break like everybody else, but when you go to your own business property it moves the focus, at least potentially, from your official duties to promoting and attending to your business. And that is a different kind of problem than taking more weekends off than we’d like, or how often a president plays golf, or anything like that,” Bookbinder added.
I just won the Golf Club Championship, probably my last, at Trump International Golf Club, in Palm Beach County, Florida. Such a great honor! The Awards dinner is tonight, at the Club. I want to thank the wonderful golf staff and all of the many fantastic golfers that… pic.twitter.com/EORR2yxGnB
— BIG ORANGE SOLDIER (@Big_Orange44) March 16, 2025
Co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, Robert Weissman, chimed in as well, saying, “As much as the waste of taxpayer resources for excessive vacationing is, there’s the self-enrichment from the payments made to Mar-a-Lago by agents who were there to provide security.”
“Of course, Trump famously ran the first time complaining about the amount of golf that Barack Obama played, which was more or less local and didn’t require plane travel. Our strong preference is that Trump flies to Florida, and stays there for full-time retirement,” Weissman concluded.
