President Donald Trump has pushed his taxpayer-funded golf tab past $118 million on his 26th visit to Mar-a-Lago, his for-profit resort in Palm Beach, Florida, with a Saturday visit to his course in neighboring West Palm Beach.
The new total is the equivalent of 296 years of the $400,000 presidential salary that his supporters often boast that he is not taking.
And of that $118.3 million, at least several million has gone into Trump’s own cash registers, as Secret Service agents, White House staff and other administration officials stay and eat at his hotels and golf courses.
The exact amount going into Trump’s pocket cannot be determined because the White House refuses to reveal how many Trump aides have been staying at his properties when he visits them and the administration will not turn over receipts for the charges incurred.
Trump’s White House on Saturday also ignored queries regarding Trump’s golf partners, continuing its practice of keeping that information secret unless he plays with a celebrity or with Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.). Previous administrations routinely disclosed the president’s golf partners.
At this exact point in former President Barack Obama’s first term, he had spent 88 days on a golf course. Saturday was Trump’s 227th day as president on a course that he owns. If Trump continues golfing at the pace he has set in his first three years, he will surpass in just one term the total number of days Obama spent golfing over two full terms — despite having repeatedly criticized Obama for playing too much golf and having promised, as a candidate, that he would be too busy to play any golf at all.
