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Fact check: What was the total cost of Donald Trump's golf trips in 2020?
Executive summary
Donald Trump’s golf-related costs to taxpayers in 2020 do not have a single universally agreed figure in the materials provided, with different analyses producing contrasting totals and differing scopes: one December 2020 analysis reports $151.5 million attributed to his trips (including Mar‑a‑Lago visits), while other summaries aggregate broader multi‑year tallies such as a $71 million figure tied to golfing expenses reported later. The documentation from the U.S. Secret Service and contemporaneous reports detail sizeable line items for protective operations without producing a consolidated 2020-only total, leaving the precise 2020-only taxpayer tab dependent on the methodology and scope adopted by each reporter or watchdog [1] [2] [3].
1. Big number clash: $151.5 million versus $71 million — what each claim actually covers
The December 24, 2020 headline figure of $151.5 million appears in a HuffPost analysis claiming that Trump’s golf trips and related travel cost taxpayers that sum, with an average Mar‑a‑Lago trip estimated at $3.4 million per visit; that piece frames costs broadly across protective and local security expenditures [1]. By contrast, a later summary cites $71 million in golfing expenses tied to Trump, noting large Secret Service outlays such as more than $600,000 on carts and portable toilets at his Bedminster club; this later figure appears to be a different aggregation, likely spanning a different time window or counting a narrower set of line items focused specifically on golf trips rather than all presidential travel [2]. The divergence demonstrates how scope and methodology — whether counting all travel-related protective costs, per‑trip averages, or only items explicitly labeled “golf” — drive headline totals [1] [2].
2. Official documentation: Secret Service reports give granular bills but not a single 2020 total
A March 2020 U.S. Secret Service report provides detailed operational and temporary duty costs for protective operations at specific events such as a Turnberry trip, but it explicitly does not compile a consolidated total for all of Trump’s 2020 golf travel, nor does it include payroll, benefits or Department of Defense assistance in that accounting [3]. That omission is material: Secret Service expense tallies for specific deployments are useful for line‑item transparency but do not equal an all‑inclusive taxpayer cost unless a reporter aggregates multiple deployments and matches them to each presidential trip. The evidence here shows primary documents that allow partial accounting but require secondary aggregation choices to produce a headline number [3].
3. Local and foreign costs: scattered bills add up but are counted differently
Reports cite several discrete examples that illustrate how local and international security and support costs accumulate: a 2018 Turnberry trip exceeded $1.1 million to taxpayers, and local security for Mar‑a‑Lago was reported in other jurisdictions as costing millions [4] [5]. Those incidents show different taxpayers bearing costs at federal, county, and even foreign levels depending on where a trip occurred. Aggregating those bills into a 2020 total requires choices about whether to include local county security, foreign expenses, or only federal protective operations; inconsistent inclusion of those components explains part of the variance between the $151.5 million and lower estimates [4] [5] [1].
4. Business payments and potential conflicts: related figures muddy the picture
Separate reporting documents that Trump’s businesses received more than $900,000 from the government since he took office, with hundreds of thousands tied to travel and property use, a statistic that underscores an overlapping but distinct question from taxpayer security costs [6]. Watchdog organizations have later produced broader corruption and usage tallies that reference visits to Trump properties across terms but do not isolate 2020 golf costs specifically [7]. Mixing payments to private businesses owned by the president with protective and logistical expense figures can inflate perceived “golf” costs unless the analyst is explicit about what is being counted [6] [7].
5. What the evidence supports and what remains unresolved
The documents and analyses here support two clear facts: first, substantial taxpayer funds were expended on protective operations linked to Trump’s travel and golf-related trips; second, there is no single official 2020-only total in the materials provided, because primary reports are disaggregated and secondary estimates differ by methodology [3] [1]. Reconciling the $151.5 million headline with later $71 million or other figures requires explicit methodological choices about time frame, inclusion of local and foreign costs, and whether payments to private Trump properties are counted. For a definitive 2020-only taxpayer total one would need a line‑by‑line aggregation of all federal, local, and foreign protective and operational expenditures tied specifically to each 2020 trip, a task that the cited sources either do not perform or perform using differing scopes [1] [2] [3].