The rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump had spent $18 million of taxpayers’ money on golf trips during the first six weeks of his second term stemmed from a HuffPost analysis. We spoke to the reporter about his methodology, which used a government report on the cost of Trump’s travel during 2017.
Snopes also calculated a cost estimate for the 2025 trips using the same report and adjusting the cost for inflation. The resulting number was higher than HuffPost’s estimate of $18 million.
Six weeks into Donald Trump’s second term as president, a rumor began to spread that his golf trips had already cost taxpayers more than $18 million.
For example, a March 8, 2025, post on X claimed that his golf habit was “bleeding taxpayers dry” (archived):
The post had more than 8.5 million views and 111,500 likes as of this writing. The claim spread on X, as well as on Reddit, with separate posts underscoring that he had played golf 13 days of the 48 days he had spent in office, or more than a quarter of the days. Further, Snopes readers searched the site, looking for confirmation that this was true.
The rumor stemmed from a March 8, 2025, analysis by HuffPost, whose S.V. Dáte calculated this estimate using data from a 2019 Government Accountability Office report (we have preserved a copy here).
We contacted Dáte asking for an explanation of his methodology. He replied in an email that he based his calculations on the cost of golf trips Trump made in 2017, as reported by the GAO. “The figures are still 2017 dollars,” Dáte said. “I don’t feel comfortable simply indexing to CPI [the Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation] because much of the cost is salaries of various federal agency employees and I don’t have a good sense of how those have increased.”
A GAO spokesperson said via email that “GAO does not have any work underway on this subject,” regarding Trump’s 2025 trips.
We also contacted the White House and will update this report should they respond.
It should be noted that besides golfing, Trump has worked during these trips to Florida. For example, he has signed executive orders and given press conferences from Mar-a-Lago since the beginning of his second term (although this has drawn criticism, as he has insisted that federal workers should stop working from home).
The 2019 GAO report said the first four golf trips of Trump’s first term, from Feb. 3 to March 5, 2017, cost a total of $13.6 million, incurred by the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. This amount excluded other costs (emphasis ours):
These costs consisted of approximately $10.6 million for operating costs and $3.0 million for temporary duty costs. DOD and DHS incurred the majority of these costs — about $8.5 million and $5.1 million, respectively. As previously mentioned, these figures do not include certain classified cost information. Moreover, they do not include the salaries and benefits of U.S. government civilian and military personnel traveling with the President or involved with agency travel preparations, because these personnel would have received their salaries and benefits for the conduct of their regular duties and responsibilities regardless of whether the President traveled.
We identified about $60,000 in expenses paid to Mar-a-Lago for these four trips.
Dáte wrote that each of these four trips had cost $3,383,250 in 2017 dollars (the CPI calculator of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows this would amount to $4,431,530.71 in 2025 dollars). He used this amount to estimate the cost of golf trips Trump took from his second inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, to March 8, 2025.
Trump made six trips to Florida by March 8, 2025, including five to Mar-a-Lago (one was to his Doral golf course outside of Miami, south of Mar-a-Lago). Dáte’s analysis said Trump golfed on 13 of his first 48 days in office; a review of the president’s public schedule confirmed Dáte’s assertion.
To replicate Dáte’s $18 million estimate, we multiplied his $3,383,250 single-trip estimate for early 2017 by Trump’s number of trips to Mar-a-Lago through March 8, 2025 (five) — $16.9 million in 2017 dollars. Dáte told us he added an estimated $1.1 million for the Doral trip. He said that trip would cost less than a trip to Mar-a-Lago because Mar-a-Lago is surrounded by water, making surveillance more complex.
Dáte said in a telephone conversation that he used a slightly lower number than the true average cost per trip, according to the GAO report — $3,392,000 — because he realized certain costs had been slightly overestimated.
While this is a crude calculation, Snopes used the inflation-adjusted number — $4.43 million — to estimate that Trump’s first five visits to Mar-a-Lago in 2025 could have totaled $22.2 million in 2025 dollars. This estimate does not include the Doral visit.
Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago mobilize extensive resources for his protection, from boats guarding the coast of the island where Mar-a-Lago is located, to lodging for his team and the members of his security detail.
These trips also come with costs for local law enforcement. For example, on Feb. 28, 2025, an ABC news affiliate reported that his visits cost the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office $240,000 a day, and that one recent visit had cost the department more than $1 million.
Snopes has also looked into the cost of Trump’s visit to the 2025 Super Bowl and how much time former President Joe Biden spent on vacation.
Sources:
Cardenas, Victoria De. ‘Another Visit, Another $240k/Day: What President Trump’s Trips Home Cost Taxpayers’. WEAR, 28 Feb. 2025, https://weartv.com/news/local/protecting-the-president-costs-pbso-240k-a-day-when-hes-in-palm-beach-county.
‘CPI Inflation Calculator’. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm. Accessed 19 Mar. 2025.
FiscalNote, Roll Call. ‘Roll Call Factba.Se – Donald J. Trump’s Public Schedule’. Roll Call Factba.Se, https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/topic/calendar/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2025.
PRESIDENTIAL TRAVEL: Secret Service and DOD Need to Ensure That Expenditure Reports Are Prepared and Submitted to Congress. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Jan. 2019, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-19-178.pdf. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r0VAkQOypAqAb_ZNPruoXkOy1A9w5nAu/view?usp=sharing.
‘Trump Golf Weekends’ Cost To Taxpayers Hits $18.2 Million’. HuffPost, 8 Mar. 2025, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-golf18-million_n_67cb892fe4b02f3ad1f4b2bb.
Webb, Kristina. ‘FAA Notice: President Trump to Make Sixth Visit to Palm Beach since Inauguration’. The Palm Beach Post, https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/trump/2025/03/11/faa-notice-trump-to-make-6th-visit-to-mar-a-lago-since-inauguration/82277124007/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2025.
