How much did each president (Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump) spend on presidential travel for golf outings?
Executive summary
Available reporting in the provided set does not give a clean, authoritative table of what Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump each spent on presidential golf travel overall; most documents focus on estimates for Trump’s trips, citing per-trip figures ranging from about $1 million to $13.6 million and a frequently cited $3.4 million “typical weekend” figure [1] [2] [3] [4]. Sources here mainly document disputes over methodology and political critique rather than definitive aggregated totals for each president [1] [2] [3].
1. What the available coverage actually measures — and what it doesn’t
Reporting in these documents concentrates on per-trip security and travel costs (Secret Service, aircraft operations, local law enforcement) for recent presidential outings rather than audited, presidency-wide golf spending totals for each president. For example, Judicial Watch and local officials offer per-visit estimates for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago trips — “about $1 million a trip” or higher depending on what’s counted — while county and federal estimates can diverge sharply [1] [2]. None of the provided items supplies a comprehensive, source-documented lifetime or term-by-term golf-spending total that cleanly compares Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump (not found in current reporting).
2. Disagreement over per-trip math: why estimates vary
There is no single agreed method for costing a presidential golf trip. Some calculations emphasize federal aviation operating rates (e.g., Air Force One hourly costs cited around $142,000–$200,000 in these pieces) plus Secret Service and local law-enforcement overtime [1] [2]. Other tallies — like the recurring $3.4 million-per-weekend figure reported about Trump — appear to come from compilations such as HuffPost and are reported by outlets like The New Republic and People without supplying a single accounting ledger in these excerpts [4] [3]. The gap between “about $1 million” and “$13.6 million per trip” in the sources shows how inclusion or exclusion of local agency requests, federal support, and indirect costs drives very different totals [1] [2].
3. What the sources say about Trump specifically
Multiple items in this set focus on Donald Trump’s golf travel in 2025 and report him accruing substantial costs: a recurring “typical weekend” bill of roughly $3.4 million (with some trips estimated up to $4.2 million), an often-cited aggregate figure of tens of millions through a given date (e.g., “approximately $26 million” cited by a lawmaker in People’s coverage), and county/federal estimates that put some trips in the multi-million-dollar range [3] [4] [2]. Local Palm Beach officials told GV Wire the county requested $45 million to cover security through November and that federal agencies averaged $13.6 million per trip in some tabulations — large figures that reflect broad inclusion of federal and local responses [2].
4. Context and competing perspectives in the sources
The sources present competing angles: critics and some watchdogs (e.g., Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch) emphasize high per-trip costs and taxpayer burden, while local officials note they “provide” requested resources and imply limited choice in protecting the president [1] [2]. Outlets repeating journalistic estimates (People, New Republic) tended to highlight the headline dollar figures and political criticism [3] [4]. The coverage shows political actors using cost estimates to argue efficiency or misuse; methodology disputes and selective inclusion of costs suggest potential partisan framing in some claims [3] [1] [2].
5. Limits of these sources for comparative history
If you want a like-for-like comparison of how much Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump each spent on golf travel across their presidencies, the documents here are insufficient: they do not provide audited, presidency-wide totals or a consistent methodology to permit direct comparison (not found in current reporting). The supplied material focuses on recent Trump-era estimates and local/federal cost requests rather than systematic historical accounting for prior presidents [1] [2].
6. How to get a rigorous comparison going forward
The coverage suggests a credible comparative analysis would need: (a) a transparent definition (what counts — aviation ops, Secret Service, local police overtime, lodging, lost-opportunity costs); (b) a documented list of golf trips for each president from White House schedules and archival records; and (c) consistent unit costs (e.g., Air Force One hourly ops, Secret Service overtime multipliers, local law-enforcement invoicing). None of the supplied sources provides that full framework, so researchers should seek GAO audits, agency invoicing and White House schedules to build an apples-to-apples comparison (not found in current reporting; [1] suggests GAO and Air Force rates are often referenced by commentators).
Bottom line: The documents you provided document large, disputed estimates for Trump’s golf trips and show why per-trip figures vary wildly, but they do not contain authoritative, comparable totals for Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump across their presidencies [3] [4] [1] [2].