Which Trump golf courses have received the most taxpayer funding in 2025?
Executive summary
Independent trackers and news analyses show that the bulk of 2025 taxpayer spending tied to President Trump’s golf outings flowed to his Florida properties — specifically Mar‑a‑Lago and nearby Palm Beach/Jupiter courses — with repeated Bedminster, New Jersey visits a distant but clear second and a high‑cost single trip to Scotland (Aberdeen) standing out as the most expensive individual outing [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Mar‑a‑Lago and Palm Beach area: the biggest cumulative recipient
Multiple outlets and analytical trackers attribute the largest share of 2025 golf‑related taxpayer costs to Mar‑a‑Lago and the nearby Palm Beach and Jupiter courses because of frequency and concentrated security logistics; HuffPost and other reporting put the year’s total golf tab at roughly $70–71 million and note that Mar‑a‑Lago was the site of roughly 16 presidential trips in 2025, with each Florida trip carrying multi‑million‑dollar travel and protection costs (about $3.4 million per trip in one HuffPost estimate) [1] [2] [5].
2. Bedminster, New Jersey: repeated trips at mid‑range cost
Press accounts show that the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster was the site of multiple (reported nine) presidential trips in 2025 and earlier, with public estimates placing the per‑trip taxpayer cost at roughly $1.1 million in those prior analyses — making Bedminster the second‑largest recipient by cumulative spending because of trip count rather than any single large outlay [3] [6].
3. Scotland (Aberdeen) and one‑off expensive overseas visits
The opening of Trump International Golf Links Aberdeen and related appearances produced a single, unusually expensive overseas bill — outlets and analysts estimated the five‑day Scotland visit at about $10 million in travel, security, logistics and lodging, making it the costliest single trip even if it did not approach the Florida cumulative total [6] [4] [1].
4. Discrepancies between trackers and why totals vary
Published totals are inconsistent: HuffPost’s late‑November analysis put 2025 golf costs near $70.8–71 million while the real‑time tracker DidTrumpGolfToday.com produced higher figures (above $100 million in some iterations) and other outlets cited different tallies; those divergences stem from varying methodologies — which trips are counted, which security and support costs are attributed directly to golf versus other presidential business, and whether local law enforcement reimbursements or Marine One flights for non‑playing days are included — and the public sources do not provide a single, itemized federal accounting to reconcile them [5] [7] [1] [8].
5. Alternative viewpoints and implicit agendas
Proponents argue travel and security are standard for any president and that critics cherry‑pick costs to score political points; critics and watchdogs counter that frequent visits to properties owned by the president create both optics of private benefit and direct expenditures that flow to the Trump Organization via lodging and services — reporting highlights these tensions and notes political framing on both sides, including Guardian and Democrats.org commentary that emphasizes perceived enrichment and the White House defense that the president is working while traveling [9] [10] [3].
6. Limits of available reporting and final assessment
Public reporting allows a confident ranking by likely cumulative taxpayer impact in 2025 — first the Mar‑a‑Lago/Palm Beach cluster, second Bedminster (NJ), third the one‑off Scotland trip — but cannot produce an exact, fully reconciled dollar‑by‑dollar ledger because federal cost allocations for presidential travel and security are spread across agencies and accounting practices and because independent trackers use differing inclusion rules; those methodological gaps are explicitly noted in the cited coverage [1] [5] [8].