WASHINGTON — Since reclaiming the presidency last month, Donald Trump has already expended $10.7 million of taxpayer funds on golfing, a cost seemingly overlooked by his “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is tasked with identifying waste, fraud, and abuse.
The expenses associated with golfing — which are likely to occur almost every weekend during Trump’s term — seem to have gone unnoticed by Elon Musk and his “high-IQ” programming team, as Trump refers to them, who are combing through the federal budget and marking items they deem questionable as “fraud.”
While they flag five- and six-figure contracts and grants as wasteful, they have turned a blind eye to Trump’s seven-figure golf outings thus far. A search for posts by DOGE on Musk’s social media platform, previously known as Twitter, showed no mentions of the term “golf.”
A senior White House official redirected inquiries regarding DOGE — established by Trump through an executive order on his first day in office — to the press office. However, neither that office nor several officials in the Trump administration responded to HuffPost’s questions about the four golf trips.
Each weekend since Trump resumed the presidency on January 20 has featured a golf trip, bringing his total to nine golf days at his properties within his first 30 days in office.
“It’s evident that the Trump administration’s interpretation of corruption and wasteful spending does not include expenditures that ultimately benefit the president,” stated Jordan Libowitz of the advocacy organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “By visiting his for-profit enterprises approximately one-third of his days in office, Trump ensures that government funds follow him, profiting from the visits.”
HuffPost’s calculation of $10.7 million is derived from a 2019 report by the Government Accountability Office, which detailed the costs associated with Trump’s initial trips to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida country club, during his first term. According to the GAO, each trip incurred an estimated total cost of $3,383,250, which included around one-third attributed to the round trip flight of Air Force One, plus additional expenses for transporting vehicles such as two presidential limousines, and compensating the Coast Guard for deploying a ship off the coast and armed boats in the Intracoastal Waterway.
These figures are based on 2017 dollars and have likely increased since then.
HuffPost then extrapolated these costs to estimate totals for other golf locales, which include courses owned by Trump in Doral, Florida; Palos Verdes, California; Bedminster, New Jersey; as well as his courses in Ireland and Scotland.
“By visiting his for-profit businesses roughly a third of his days in office, Trump is directing government spending to follow him there, and profiting off the trip.”
– Jordan Libowitz, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
During his first term, Trump’s golf-related expenditures amounted to $152 million over four years, totaling 293 golf days at his own resorts.
In his second term so far, Trump has played golf at his own resorts during all four weekends of his presidency. Three of these trips occurred at his West Palm Beach course during visits to Mar-a-Lago; nevertheless, the golf-related expenses for one trip were reduced by about $546,000 due to a diversion to New Orleans for the Super Bowl. The expense total for the initial trip to Doral is also less than what a pure golf trip would entail, as it included stops in Los Angeles and Las Vegas for official White House matters. HuffPost has not included these flight costs in his golf-related total.
“It would be one thing if he went to Camp David every few days to play golf. This seems to be nothing more than leveraging the presidency to benefit his businesses,” Libowitz remarked.
Throughout former President Joe Biden’s term, Trump’s allies often criticized him for spending much of his weekends at his homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, raising concerns about taxpayer costs.
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Those travel expenses, however, constitute only a portion of what Trump has accrued. Typically, Biden used Marine 1 for travel, with helicopter trips costing approximately $150,000. In instances where he utilized the smaller Air Force One, a modified Boeing 757, total trip expenses reached around $500,000.
