Trump's Golf Costing The Taxpayer
President Donald Trump, before he became the official resident of the White House, was openly critical of former President Barack Obama’s love for golf. But according to a new report, the Secret Service has paid over $35,000 for golf cart rentals alone while guarding Trump since his inauguration.
According to purchase orders reviewed by CBS News, $35,185 was spent on renting golf carts during the president’s repeated visits to Palm Beach, Florida, which houses his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Read: President Donald Trump Plays Golf For 16th Time In 11 Weeks
After saying Obama concentrated more on golf than on making the right decisions for the country, Trump said last year he would dedicate himself to working hard on the right “deals” for the country.
“You know what – and I love golf – but if I were in the White House, I don’t think I’d ever see Turnberry [in Scotland] again. I don’t think I’d ever see Doral again – I own Doral, in Miami. I don’t think I’d ever see many of the places that I have,” Trump said last year.
“I don’t ever think that I’d see anything,” he added at the time. “I just wanna stay in the White House and work my ass off, make great deals, right? Who’s gonna leave? I mean, who’s gonna leave?"
However Trump, who is spending the Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago yet again, has already played golf 16 times since he took office, less than three months since his inauguration. Obama, on the other hand, took his first golfing trip after almost 100 days as president.
In his 13 weekends as president, Trump has spent seven at Mar-a-Lago (including this one) and the cost of these trips, paid for by taxpayers, has reached $25 million, according to a new website, IsTrumpatMaraLago.org, launched Friday. That amounts to an average of about $3.5 million per trip, and given that rate of spending, Trump overtook Obama's annual travel spending average of $12.12 million during his presidency on March 4-5, when he made the fourth weekend trip to his Florida estate.
The president seems well on his way to spend more on travel in one year than his predecessor spent during his eight years in office.
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