There’s a running total for how much Trump’s golf trips have cost the country, and it crossed nine figures back in March.
HuffPost’s ongoing analysis had the total at $101.2 million in travel and security costs tied specifically to Trump’s golf outings since his second inauguration, a figure representing two-thirds of the $151.5 million his entire four-year first term cost, a period during which he spent 293 days total at his own courses. By that same March milestone this term, he’d already played golf on more than a quarter of his days in office, hitting his 110th day on a course he personally owns.
The per-trip breakdown explains why the number climbs so fast.
A visit to Mar-a-Lago alone runs roughly $3.4 million, driven largely by what it takes to secure the property: patrol boats with machine guns mounted on their bows monitoring the Intracoastal Waterway, a Coast Guard vessel stationed offshore in the Atlantic, plus additional law enforcement and explosive-sniffing dogs. Bedminster in New Jersey costs about $1.1 million a visit, with nine trips logged by late last year. His single costliest outing on record was a nearly $10 million trip to Aberdeen, Scotland, built around opening a new course at his resort there.
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Jordan Libowitz of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had a pointed assessment of the whole arrangement.
“At a time when gas prices are spiking and Americans across the country find themselves in an ever-worsening affordability crisis, the president has burned through over $100 million in taxpayer money in order to make promotional appearances at his golf courses and hobnob with millionaires and billionaires,” he said. “If his goal were to help struggling Americans out, one thing he could try is stop spending their money going to his golf courses.”
The running total kept climbing well past that March figure. A separate Trump Golf Tracker analysis, which monitors motorcade sightings at his properties, put his full 2025 golf spending at $110.6 million across 88 rounds played, with December and New Year’s alone adding another $14 million to the tab. If Trump keeps that pace up through the rest of his term, he’s on track to surpass Barack Obama’s entire eight-year total of 333 rounds within his own four years back in office.
Most of that money isn’t the kind of spending that can simply be trimmed. It’s largely salaries for the military personnel and law enforcement officers protecting the president, plus the cost of Air Force One flights and the C-17 cargo planes needed to move motorcade vehicles, expenses that exist regardless of destination.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
