Trump's First Month Travel Expenses Cost Taxpayers Just Less Than What Obama Spent In A Year

On Monday, President Trump will return to Washington, D.C. from his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, where he’s spent the last three weekends.

The Washington Post reports that those three trips “probably cost the federal treasury about $10 million, based on figures used in an October government report analyzing White House travel, including money for Coast Guard units to patrol the exposed shoreline and other military, security and staffing expenses associated with moving the apparatus of the presidency.”

Trump headed to Mar-a-Lago for third straight weekend, obliterating campaign promise
Trump to spend yet another weekend hobnobbing with rich folks who pay for access.thinkprogress.org

So far, the highlight of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago trips has been him and his aides struggling to deal with an international crisis in full view of diners and staff during the evening of February 11.

The three Mar-a-Lago getaways, combined with the hundreds of thousands of public dollars spent on Secret Service protection during two international trips Trump’s adult sons have taken to promote their father’s business, cost taxpayers about $11.3 million over the first month’s of Trump’s presidency, according to the UK-based Independent. President Obama, by contrast, spent an average of $12.1 million on travel each year.

It wasn’t even a year ago that Trump was complaining about taxpayers “paying a fortune for the use of Air Force One.”

It was a theme Trump returned to often during the Obama years.

Trump’s decision to spend three consecutive weekends at his “southern White House” stands in contrast to what he promised during the campaign, when he said he’d “rarely leave the White House.”

“I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” Trump told a reporter in 2015. “I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off… You don’t have time to take time off.”

While in Florida on Sunday, Trump, who repeatedly criticized Obama for playing golf while president, enjoyed his sixth golf outing during his first month as president. On Monday, the White House admitted to misleading reporters about the amount of golf Trump played during his 18-hole excursion with pro golfer Rory McIlroy:

WH y'day: Trump played "a couple" holes→ report he played 18 w/McIlroy→ WH today: he "intended to play a few holes & decided to play longer