No matter where you stand on Donald Trump and his love for golf, some of the facts are undeniable. One of those is how much money Trump and his administration have spent on golf cart rentals a few months into his first full year in office.
In a recent investigation of how much the Secret Service of the U.S. has spent in 2017, USA Today discovered that $60,000 has been spent on golf cart rentals to protect Trump.
Since his inauguration, Trump has taken seven trips to his estate in Mar-a-Lago, Fla., traveled to his Bedminster, N.J., golf club five times and returned to Trump Tower in Manhattan once.
Trump's frequent visits to his "winter White House" and "summer White House" are especially challenging for the agency, which must maintain a regular security infrastructure at each – while still allowing access to paying members and guests.
Always costly in manpower and equipment, the president's jaunts to Mar-a-Lago are estimated to cost at least $3 million each, based on a General Accountability Office estimate for similar travel by former President Obama. The Secret Service has spent some $60,000 on golf cart rentals alone this year to protect Trump at both Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster.
That seems like a lot!
Trump has played nearly twice as much golf as Barack Obama at the same time in his presidency, and it shows in the cost of those carts. It will be intriguing to track this and see if Trump keeps up this pace. If he does, he will have played 170 times in his four-year term, which is actually around Obama's final number (167 per term). But Obama increased that rate a lot the deeper he got into his presidency. It will be fascinating to see if Trump does the same.
