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What portion of Secret Service and travel costs are attributed to presidential golf outings?
Executive Summary
Investigations and analyses show presidential golf outings have produced substantial but varying estimates of added Secret Service and travel costs; independent tallies range from tens of millions to over $144 million for Trump’s presidency depending on methods and what expenses are included. Multiple reporting projects and watchdog groups agree that visits to private clubs and resorts — especially Mar‑a‑Lago, Bedminster and other Trump properties — drove a material share of incremental security and transportation spending, but no single official accounting isolates a definitive portion attributable solely to golf outings [1] [2] [3]. The available data therefore support a conclusion that golf trips were a notable driver of additional taxpayer expense, while the precise percentage of total Secret Service and travel budgets they represent remains contested and sensitive to inclusion rules and assumptions [4] [5].
1. Why the math is messy — different studies measure different things
Analysts diverge because they define and aggregate costs differently: some tallies count only outlays at private properties and local security contracts, others add the full hourly operating cost of Air Force One, military support flights, overtime for Secret Service agents, and auxiliary Coast Guard or local law enforcement activity. A CREW investigation documented nearly $100,000 in Secret Service spending at Trump properties in early months of his second term and stated payments to Trump properties made up roughly 10% of specified property‑related Secret Service spending in that snapshot, but CREW did not and could not produce a single percentage of all presidential travel costs nationwide [2]. Separate independent estimates that included aircraft operating costs and widespread support functions reached much larger cumulative figures — for example, one February 2025 analysis estimated more than $144 million tied to golf and resort trips when counting Air Force One hours, military flights, and local security overtime [1].
2. What official records say — limited scope and few line items
Government documents provide transaction‑level detail in places but rarely a complete causal attribution to “golf.” A 2020 Secret Service report of expenses at Turnberry itemized operational costs like rental cars and lodging yet explicitly excluded salaries, benefits and Department of Defense assistance, meaning the report cannot be read as a full cost-of-golf accounting [3]. Procurement notices and local contracts — for example, procurement entries for perimeter security at Mar‑a‑Lago and West Palm Beach area contracts — reveal specific vendor payments and temporary duty expenditures, but those are fragments of a much larger, distributed set of expenditures across agencies and time [4]. The lack of a standardized federal method to tag travel as "personal golf" versus official business prevents a single authoritative percentage being produced from those records alone [4] [3].
3. Independent estimates: scope, assumptions, and divergence
Independent and watchdog analyses employ differing assumptions that produce widely varying totals. Estimates that count only on‑site security and Secret Service vendor payments produce more modest figures (millions), while those that also apportion aircraft operating costs, support flights, local law enforcement overtime and Coast Guard patrols scale totals into the tens or hundreds of millions [2] [1]. For example, an analysis that apportioned Air Force One’s roughly $200,000 hourly operating cost to frequent trips produced large per‑visit costs and underpinned the $144 million figure; others argue such full‑cost apportionment overstates the incremental marginal taxpayer burden because some aircraft hours would have occurred regardless [1] [4]. These methodological choices explain the core disagreement more than the raw data themselves.
4. What the timeline and visit counts reveal about pattern and exposure
Visit tallies compiled by reporters show a large share of trips to private resorts and golf courses during the period in question; one dataset counted 99 visits to properties with 62 to golf courses, indicating a concentration of activity at sites that require extensive localized security infrastructure [5]. That pattern concentrates discrete, repeatable costs — recurring perimeter security, hotel and ground‑transportation bookings, and coordination with local authorities — which accumulate materially over time even if each single trip’s marginal aircraft costs are contested [5] [2]. Repeated visits to owned properties also create appearance‑of‑conflict concerns that watchdogs highlight, which partly motivates investigations that focus on vendor payments to those venues [2].
5. Bottom line: notable burden but no single definitive percentage
The evidence shows golf‑related presidential travel has been a material source of incremental Secret Service and travel spending, and multiple credible calculations produce totals ranging from millions to well over $100 million depending on inclusions. No government office has published a single comprehensive percentage isolating “golf outings” from all presidential travel, and available official records are fragmented and limited by scope, making exact attribution impossible with current public data [3] [4]. Stakeholders advocating transparency argue for standardized tagging of personal versus official travel costs and clearer reimbursement rules; those skeptical of high totals point to methodological choices like full aircraft cost allocation that inflate estimates [1].