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Fact check: How many golf trips has Trump taken as President, and what was the total cost?
Executive Summary
Independent tallies and advocacy groups report that Donald Trump’s presidential golf travel has been frequent and costly, with claims ranging from tens of millions to more than $150 million in taxpayer expense across terms. Discrepancies among counts and cost estimates stem from differing timeframes, methods, and partisan sources; the most cited figures are a $151.5 million total for his first term and multi-million-dollar bills for individual overseas trips such as Scotland (2025 reporting) [1] [2] [3].
1. A headline figure that keeps resurfacing — $151.5 million and its origins
Multiple outlets and analyses repeat a $151.5 million taxpayer cost attributed to Trump’s golf-related travel during his first term; that figure appears in both retrospective reports and summaries circulated in 2025 [1] [2]. The $151.5 million number is widely cited as a cumulative accounting of travel, security, support staff, and logistical costs linked to golf and visits to properties he owns. Advocacy groups and media outlets use this aggregate to illustrate fiscal impact, but the figure’s composition—what items were counted, which dates were included, and whether counterfactual baselines (what costs would have been absent a golfing trip) were applied—varies among sources [1] [2].
2. Second-term escalation claims — more rounds, bigger bills
Reports from mid-to-late 2025 assert a sharp increase in both frequency and cost during Trump’s second term, with groups like CREW and media outlets documenting 62 visits to his golf courses in the first six months and estimating high per-trip costs [4] [5]. Newsweek and CREW cite an average $1.4 million per golf trip figure in some statements, extrapolating to tens of millions in the second term so far [5] [4]. These figures reflect increased scrutiny and more granular tracking of visits, but they depend on how a “golf trip” is defined and whether nearby non-golf activities are bundled into the tally [4] [5].
3. Singular events that drive headlines — Scotland trips and the $10 million claim
Several reports around July 2025 single out a Scotland golf visit as especially costly, estimating around $10 million for a five-day trip and arguing it promoted a private property while incurring large security and logistics costs [2] [6] [3]. A 2020 congressional press release also criticized a Scotland weekend billed at roughly $1 million, demonstrating that overseas resort visits have long attracted scrutiny [7]. Repeating Scotland totals in 2025 coverage signals both a focus on high-profile foreign trips and consistency in how some outlets aggregate immediate trip-related expenses [2] [3].
4. Methodological conflicts — why counts and costs diverge
Sources differ in timeframes, counting rules, and included expense categories. The DidTrumpGolfToday tracker logs daily sightings and estimated "golf days," producing counts like 43 golf days out of 184 in one window, while CREW counts facility visits [8] [4]. Cost tallies diverge because some analyses include only Secret Service and travel costs, others add broader White House support and opportunity costs, and partisan actors (DNC, watchdog groups) frame numbers to emphasize fiscal waste or corruption. These methodological choices explain why two credible-looking totals can both be cited yet not reconcile cleanly [8] [4] [6].
5. Small-ticket spending versus headline totals — Secret Service and on-site purchases
More granular pieces of evidence show smaller, verifiable expenditures, such as nearly $100,000 spent by the Secret Service at Trump properties in early second-term months, which media documented in October 2025 [9]. Such line-item spending provides concrete proof of taxpayer dollars flowing to private properties or local vendors during presidential travel. These smaller records underpin larger aggregate claims but also highlight that a lot of the total cost comes from security premiums, personnel overtime, and transport logistics rather than visible hotel bills alone [9].
6. Political framing and agendas — who’s making the claims and why
The dataset includes advocacy groups (CREW), partisan entities (DNC), elected Democrats (Maloney, Carper, Warren), and mainstream outlets (Newsweek) driving the narrative that golf trips are costly and potentially self-serving [4] [6] [7]. Each source uses similar facts to push different interpretations: watchdogs emphasize ethics and self-dealing, partisan groups highlight fiscal waste to political ends, and media focus on public interest and transparency. Readers should note partisan motives when encountering large headline figures; the underlying facts are consistent, but emphasis and inferred wrongdoing vary by source [7] [6] [5].
7. Bottom line — consistent pattern, contested arithmetic
Across the sources, the consistent pattern is frequent golf travel to properties he owns and substantial associated taxpayer costs, with specific trip estimates—like $10 million for a Scotland visit—repeated in multiple 2025 reports and a $151.5 million tally commonly cited for the first term [2] [3] [1]. The contested arithmetic lies in how visits are counted and which expenses are attributed directly to golf. For a definitive reconciled total, an independent, line-item audit specifying dates, included cost categories, and counterfactual baselines would be required; absent that, published figures are best read as method-dependent estimates that reveal a substantial fiscal footprint but differ in exact magnitude [1] [4] [9].