WASHINGTON – American taxpayers will shell out at least $10 million over the next several days so President Donald Trump can participate in a marketing photo opportunity at his golf resort in Aberdeen, Scotland — the profits from which will flow directly into his own pocket.
Trump is planning to visit his golf resorts in both Aberdeen on the east coast and Turnberry on the west. His appearance in Aberdeen coincides with the grand opening of a second 18-hole course there, which Trump has been personally publicizing in recent years.
The trip is unrelated to a planned state visit to the United Kingdom in September, making it by far the most expensive golf vacation to date in either of his terms. It will also increase the total golf tab in his second term to at least $52 million. He spent $152 million in taxpayer money playing golf at his own resorts in his first term.
“He’s using the presidency to market his golf courses,” said Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer in George W. Bush’s second-term White House. “At the taxpayer’s expense, he’s promoting himself.”
“We’ve reached a point where the Oval Office is an extension of the Trump Organization, and American taxpayers are footing the bill,” added Jordan Libowitz with the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “A president should not be spending time trying to make money in a foreign country while in office, but if they do, at the very least they could pick up the tab for their business trips.”
Trump’s White House officials would not respond to numerous HuffPost queries on the matter, including specifically whether Trump planned to reimburse the U.S. Treasury. In public statements, both Trump and his aides have only spoken about a planned meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
A HuffPost analysis of the expenses required by a presidential foreign trip produced a conservative estimate of $9.7 million for the five-day jaunt. It is based on the price tags of the various components — the hourly operating cost of Air Force One; the need to ferry Marine One helicopters and motorcade vehicles across the Atlantic aboard C-17 transports; Secret Service overtime expenses, etc. — as laid out in a General Accounting Office report about Trump’s trips to his Palm Beach, Florida, country club in 2017.
The HuffPost figure is based on the 2017 dollars used in the GAO report, so the actual total is almost certainly substantially higher in today’s dollars. Adjusting the number to account for the inflation over the subsequent eight years, for example, produces a total of $12.8 million.
An overseas presidential trip is dramatically more expensive than a domestic one. A flight from Joint Base Andrews to Palm Beach International is two hours each way. But a flight from suburban Washington, D.C., to Scotland will be six hours in one direction and closer to seven in the other. Air Force One has a per-hour operating cost of $273,063, meaning the total for just flying the presidential plane will be $3.8 million for the Scotland trip.
A foreign trip also requires the use of a second plane for the larger number of staff that must travel, including those from the State Department and other agencies that typically would not travel domestically. It is unclear what second aircraft will be used. The $9.7 million estimate assumes a much cheaper modified Boeing 757 will be the second plane, but if instead it is another modified 747 like the primary Air Force One, that would dramatically increase the total price tag.
Trump visited his golf resorts in Turnberry and Doonbeg, Ireland, during his first term, but both were incorporated into official visits. The first cost taxpayers $3 million more than if he had simply remained in London, and the second added $3.6 million to the trip cost. In contrast, the Scotland trip, which is to begin with an Air Force One flight there Friday morning, is primarily about golf, with a meeting with Starmer thrown in.
“Trump’s visit is not in service to the American people or to the office of the president,” said Norm Eisen, an ethics lawyer in the Obama White House. “It only serves his own personal business interests.”
The new course, named after Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, is set to open with a senior PGA tournament on Thursday, July 31, before opening to the public on Aug. 13.
“We’re going to have a meeting with ― a state meeting with the prime minister, and that’s going to be up in Aberdeen,” Trump told the BBC earlier this month.
But the head of state in the United Kingdom is King Charles, and that meeting will not happen until September. Further, Aberdeen is not the capital of the United Kingdom, or even of Scotland.
It is, however, home to Trump’s new golf course fronting the North Sea, the second at the Aberdeen resort, which Trump boasted about in a video posted to social media by his Trump International Scotland holding company in 2023.
“We built a course that’s recognized as one of the greatest golf courses in the world. Some people say it’s the greatest course ever built,” he said, as the video shows him walking the site wearing a baby-blue, pom-pom-topped winter cap. “We’ll have many, many championships here… I think it’ll be a great success.”
The Scotland marketing trip is not the first time Trump has used taxpayer resources and the imprimatur and trappings of the presidency to promote events that put money into his own bank account.
In April, he flew Air Force One from Palm Beach to Miami International Airport and then took a Marine Corps helicopter to his Doral golf resort less than two miles away. There, he attended a private dinner for the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament — a business partner of his — before returning to Mar-a-Lago the same way he came.
The following month, Trump flew Marine One from the White House to his golf resort in Northern Virginia to attend a dinner for the 220 winners of a contest to see who could purchase the most “meme” crypto coins he is producing.
Both events created the spectacle of the presidential helicopter landing at his golf courses. That visual will likely be repeated for Trump’s coming visits to both Turnberry and Aberdeen. (Following his visit to Doonbeg, the resort posted videos of Marine One landing there on social media, but deleted them after HuffPost began inquiring.)
Trump similarly used his office to enrich himself in the first term, too. He told the Republican National Committee to use properties he owned for their meetings, and encouraged other Republican candidates and committees to do the same. He and his top appointees encouraged the use of the hotel he owned at the time five blocks from the White House as a gathering spot for administration officials and both domestic and foreign lobbyists seeking favors. Some delegations from overseas took blocks of rooms or even a whole floor during their visits. Every dime of profit from the restaurants and room rentals flowed into a trust that benefited him personally.
As blatant as that was, his behavior in the second term is even more egregious, critics said.
“He did this in the first term, but it’s just gotten a lot worse,” Painter said, pointing out that if Trump is taking payments from the U.S. Secret Service or other government agencies for lodging staff at his resorts, that would violate the Constitution’s “emoluments” clause.
He acknowledged, though, that a president returned to office despite attempting a coup to remain in power and also retaining secret documents he took with him to his country club is not likely to care about the propriety of using his office for his personal gain.
“That’s the situation we’re in,” Painter said. “I think there’s a lot more tolerance of bad actions in his second term than in the first term.”
