Before he was president, one of Donald Trump’s favorite targets for criticism was Barack Obama’s golfing, suggesting the then-Commander-in-Chief spent too much time on the links. Whether Trump has taken that as permission to do likewise during his own term or not is unclear, but what is definitely clear is that Trump spends a lot of time on the golf course himself.
The folks over at The Root have done some math on just how much President Trump’s golf trips are costing taxpayers, and frankly, they’ve come up with an eye-opening statistic.
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According to The Root’s calculations, Donald Trump golf habits make him the nation’s 10th highest paid athlete.
And remember, America has some staggeringly well paid athletes. According to Forbes , the highest paid American athlete in 2019 was Seattle Seahawks QB Russell Wilson, who raked in $9 million in salary and another $80.5 million in endorsements. The 10th on Forbes’s list, baseball player Mike Trout, earned $50.6 million overall after being signed to the richest contract in the history of team sports, a 12-year, $426.5 million deal.
By The Root’s math, Trout and Trump, who famously takes no salary for his role as president, are in a dead heat.
So, here’s how the math breaks down.
According to data from the Government Accountability Office, Americans paid out $13 million for Trump to take four trips to his own properties for golf outings over a one-month period in 2017.
That included $60,000 for rooms and space, thousands more for Secret Service rooms and meals, and so on. Estimates suggest each round of golf set taxpayers back about $600,000. Each trip the president takes to Mar-a-Lago and the Palm Beach golf course costs taxpayers about $3.4 million, according to The Washington Post .
Remember, all of that money goes directly into Trump’s own company.
And the president golfs a lot.
According to TrumpGolfCount.com , which tracks the president’s trips, Trump is up to 247 trips during his term, with an estimated cost of $130 million. Add to that the $13.8 million that taxpayers reimbursed Palm Beach for local security costs up to spring 2019 and extrapolate those costs to now, and you end up with a total of $152 million in golf costs since Trump took office.
Divide that by the three years of Trump’s term so far, and you’ve got the same number as Mike Trout, $50.6 million per year. Phil Mickelson — Phil Mickelson!! — only made $48.4 million in 2019.
As Trump has been so fond of comparing the two, President Obama’s total travel costs over eight years came in at $114 million.
That’s not just golf. That’s all travel put together, which averages out to a mere $14.25 million annual cost to taxpayers. And none of that money went to Obama’s own pockets.
