How much taxpayer cost is attributed to presidential golf trips for Obama and Trump, respectively?

1. Big-picture headline figures and why they look different

Multiple outlets running tallies conclude Obama’s eight‑year golf and vacation travel/security tab sits near $85–90 million (citing Judicial Watch) while Trump’s totals are both higher and more variably reported: a HuffPost‑style analysis and trackers put Trump’s second‑term golf travel at roughly $71 million to $110.6 million for 2025 to date, and his first term has been reported at about $151.5 million — figures that lead some outlets to project multi‑hundred‑million totals over a full term if current pace holds ^{[1] [2] [4] [3]}.

2. How reporters and trackers are calculating Trump’s tab

Most modern tallies rely on the Government Accountability Office’s 2019 breakdown of several presidential golf trips as a baseline and then extrapolate average per‑trip costs (airlift, motorcade, advance teams, Secret Service overtime, local law enforcement support) to every counted golf outing; trackers such as the “Trump Golf Tracker” and independent sites apply those per‑trip averages to the number of visits, producing the $71m–$110m range for the current term and much higher cumulative figures when combined with the first term or projected out ^{[5] [6] [2] [4]}. Congressional and watchdog reports have also itemized discrete expensive examples — for instance a Scotland visit that congressional Democrats said cost more than $1.1 million when combining Secret Service and State Department spending ^[7].

3. Obama’s number: smaller, but still contested

The frequently cited $85–90 million figure for Obama’s golf and vacation travel comes from Judicial Watch’s aggregation and has been used in comparative stories; reporters note Obama often used nearby federal facilities (like Joint Base Andrews) or smaller aircraft for recreation, which reduced some travel costs compared with longer flights to privately‑owned resorts ^{[1] [8]}. Coverage also notes Obama played many rounds — roughly 333 rounds over eight years per some tallies — but that frequency did not translate into the same scale of travel‑security spending attributed to Trump’s trips to privately‑owned properties ^{[1] [8]}.

4. Why estimates diverge — methodology, scope and incentives

Discrepancies arise because sources choose different baselines (GAO pilots vs. watchdog extrapolations), include or exclude ancillary agency costs (State Department, DHS, Air Force cargo flights), adjust — or do not adjust — for inflation, and count only trips explicitly identified as “golf” versus general weekend visits; some trackers also add direct payments to private resort vendors via Secret Service rentals, which increases totals ^{[2] [6] [5]}. Partisan and institutional incentives matter too: conservative groups, liberal watchdogs, newsrooms and pro‑ or anti‑administration outlets highlight different figures or examples to advance accountability narratives or critiques of hypocrisy, making it essential to read each number alongside its stated methodology ^{[1] [9]}.

5. Bottom line — what can be stated with confidence

Reporting consistently shows Obama’s eight‑year golf/related travel tab in the tens of millions (commonly cited $85–90 million) and Trump’s tab materially higher and more volatile depending on method, with first‑term reporting around $151.5 million and second‑term/2025 tallies ranging roughly $71 million to $110.6 million so far and multiple analyses warning extrapolated totals could reach or exceed the low‑hundreds of millions over a full term if current patterns continue ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}. Precise totals cannot be stated definitively from the available reporting because public figures depend on differing methodologies and incomplete agency‑level disclosures, but the weight of the evidence in the cited coverage points to substantially larger taxpayer costs associated with Trump’s golf trips versus Obama’s when measured by travel and security spending as estimated by watchdogs and news analyses ^{[2] [5]}.