During former President Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House, Donald Trump repeatedly attacked him for spending too much time playing golf. Trump, in 2016, claimed that if he won the presidential election and defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, he would be too busy helping the American people to play golf.
But according to a 2020 fact-check from CNN, Trump spent a lot more time playing golf than Obama — 266 days playing golf by May 2020 compared to Obama playing 98 rounds by May 2012.
Now, ten months into Trump’s second presidency, HuffPost and the Daily Beast are reporting that his passion for golf is costing taxpayers a fortune.
HuffPost’s S.V. Date, in a late November article, reports, “Taxpayers have now shelled out nearly $71 million for President Donald Trump’s golf hobby since he retook office in January, with his second-term total on pace to break $300 million, according to a HuffPost analysis.
His visit to his course adjacent to the Palm Beach County jail Wednesday was on his 16th trip to his Mar-a-Lago country club home four miles away. Each of those trips cost $3.4 million in travel and security expenses.”
The Daily Beast’s Jack Revell says of HuffPost’s reporting, “If that figure turns out to be accurate, it would be nearly double the $151.5 million Trump spent on similar sporting outings while in office between 2017 and 2021.”
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP strategist, doesn’t find HuffPost’s figures surprising.
Wilson, one of Trump’s most scathing critics on the right, told HuffPost, “I really wish I could tell you that it would make anyone in America change their mind about him, but the corruption is so baked in, so endemic, and so ludicrous that it feels like the collective reaction will be a shrug. It’s one more example of Trump defining the presidency down. Way, way down.”
According to Revell, the cost of Trump’s golf obsession may be even worse than what HuffPost is reporting.
The Daily Beast reporter notes, “HuffPost’s analysis is based on a Government Accountability Office report on the cost of four of Trump’s golf trips in 2019 and has not been updated for inflation, indicating the true expense is likely far higher…. Most of Trump’s golf trips have been made to the president’s own private course in Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago residence, and have also included visits to his courses in Bedminster, New Jersey, and Aberdeen, Scotland.”
Revell adds, “Travel and security are the major expenses, with the challenges of securing Mar-a-Lago raising costs in particular. Trump’s use of Air Force One for trips between Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, Maryland, near the White House, to Palm Beach International Airport in Florida cost $273,063 per hour. In total, a four-hour round trip will cost taxpayers $1.1 million.”
Read the full HuffPost article at this link and the Daily Beast’s reporting here.
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