Second-term bill for Trump’s golf hobby exceeds $70 million and is on track to surpass $300 million

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Taxpayers have shelled out nearly $71 million for President Donald Trump’s golf hobby since he took office in January, and his second-term total is on track to surpass $300 million, according to a News themezone analysis.

His visit to his field adjacent to the Palm Beach County Jail on Wednesday was his 16th trip to his home at the Mar-a-Lago Country Club, four miles away. Each of those trips cost $3.4 million in travel and security expenses.

If he makes just two more trips to Mar-a-Lago in December (he made four in November, including the one on Halloween weekend), his golf expenses will exceed $75 million in 2025. At that rate, he would surpass $300 million during this four-year term.

By contrast, he spent $151.5 million of taxpayer money on golf-related travel and security expenses during his first term.

“I really wish I could tell you that would make anyone in America change their mind about him, but corruption is so entrenched, so endemic and so ridiculous that it seems like the collective reaction will be a shrug,” said Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican consultant and now Trump critic. “It’s one more example of how Trump defines the presidency downwards. Very, very downwards.”

In addition to trips to Mar-a-Lago, which does not have its own golf course but is close to his courses in West Palm Beach and Jupiter, Trump has made nine trips to his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, which cost about $1.1 million each; and a trip to promote a new course he opened at his resort in Aberdeen, Scotland. That cost taxpayers almost $10 million.

In total, his golf trips have cost Americans $70.8 million in travel and security expenses so far in 2025.

News themezone uses cost estimates derived from a 2019 Government Accountability Office report on Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago early in his first term in its analysis. Because most of the expenses are salaries of military service members and law enforcement officers, which generally have not kept pace with the consumer price index, those figures are not inflated to current dollars. However, the actual and total costs are almost certainly higher than News themezone’s unadjusted 2019 figures.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Trips to Mar-a-Lago create particularly costly security challenges. It is located on the barrier island with the Intracoastal Waterway to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. When Trump visits, small boats with machine guns on their bows patrol the channel while Coast Guard ships sail out to sea.

The biggest expense, however, is Air Force One. The modified Boeing 747 that Trump uses to travel from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to Palm Beach International Airport costs $273,063 per flight hour, according to the GAO report, meaning each four-hour round trip costs Americans $1.1 million.

His trips to his course in Bedminster are much less expensive ($1.1 million, down from $3.4 million) because the nearby airport cannot accommodate a 747. Instead, Trump flies the smaller and much cheaper modified 757.

That less expensive fee is also why former President Joe Biden’s frequent trips to Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, cost taxpayers much less money than Trump’s golf outings. The Wilmington airport runway is also too short for a 747, so Biden used the smaller 757 helicopters or Marine One to get there and back.

However, former President Barack Obama, who played golf frequently, also spent much less on the pastime than Trump because he played most of his rounds on the course at Joint Base Andrews.

Trump has never played golf at that course, but he took an aerial tour Saturday aboard Marine One. That survey cost taxpayers about $115,000, based on the amount calculated by the GAO in 2019. It is not included in News themezone’s overall $70.8 million golf total.

Before his first election in 2016, Trump promised that, unlike Obama, he would not play golf as president. “I love golf, but if I were in the White House, I don’t think I would see Turnberry again. I don’t think I would see Doral again,” he told rally attendees in February, referring to his courses in Scotland and South Florida. “I never think I’d see anything. I just want to stay in the White House and work hard.”

However, Trump broke that promise within days of taking office and, until the end of that term, played golf at one of his courses for 293 days.

Wednesday’s outing at his West Palm Beach course was his 29th day there since returning to office and his 82nd at a course he owns.