There’s a straightforward reduce on the market for Elon Musk’s DOGE squad, however someway, his workforce has missed practically $11 million President Donald Trump spent on golf journeys.
Trump has taken a golf journey every of the 4 weekends since returning to the presidency on Jan. 20, and he has now performed golf at his personal properties on 9 of his first 30 days in workplace, Huffington Publish studies.
The $10.7 million tally is predicated on a 2019 report by the Authorities Accountability Workplace breaking down the prices of Trump’s journeys to Mar-a-Lago throughout his first time period. The determine is probably going larger, as HuffPo’s math was primarily based on 2017 {dollars}.
The GAO calculated a complete value of $3,383,250 for every journey. About one-third of that was the flight value of Air Power One for the spherical journey, with extra bills for flying down autos, together with two presidential limousines, for Trump’s motorcade and reimbursing the Coast Guard for stationing a gunship within the Atlantic Ocean simply off the coast and closely armed boats within the Intracoastal Waterway.
“It’s clear that when the Trump administration considers the definition of corruption and wasteful spending, it doesn’t depend spending that leads to the president’s pockets,” stated Jordan Libowitz of the watchdog group Residents for Accountability and Ethics in Washington. “By visiting his for-profit companies roughly a 3rd of his days in workplace, Trump is directing authorities spending to observe him there and profiting off the journey.”
Trump isn’t solely {golfing} on the federal government’s dime but in addition utilizing that point to advertise the golf programs he owns.
So far in his second time period, Trump has performed golf at his personal resorts every of the 4 weekends he has been in workplace. Three of the 4 have been at his course in West Palm Seashore throughout his Mar-a-Lago visits, though the golf-related complete for one of many journeys is diminished by about $546,000 as a result of the journey included a leg to New Orleans to observe the Tremendous Bowl.
The entire for the primary journey to Doral can be lower than a pure golf trip would have value as a result of it included a phase out to Los Angeles and Las Vegas on official White Home enterprise. HuffPost isn’t counting these flight prices towards his golf complete.
“Elon? Please clarify,” wrote one critic on X. “Waste fraud and abuse!” one other critic wrote.
DOGE officers wouldn’t touch upon why presidential spending isn’t on their radar.
This $10.7 million, by the best way, is on prime of the $151.5 million he spent {golfing} in his first time period,” HuffPo White Home correspondent S.V. Date posted on X.
A Trump Golf Monitor has gone viral. Utilizing public info reveals that the president spent seven of his first 29 days in workplace {golfing}, accounting for twenty-four.14% of his presidency.
Throughout his preliminary presidential time period, the tracker claims the president visited a “Trump Group property on 428 of the 1,461 days of his first presidential time period”, about one-third of his first time period.
The president was a frequent critic of Joe Biden’s weekend seashore journeys to Delaware, however the former president traveled on Marine 1, with the helicopter journey costing about $150,000. When he used the smaller Air Power One, a modified Boeing 757, the journey bills totaled about $500,000, in response to HuffPo.
However the MAGA nation was unmoved by the report.
“Man saves nation 3trillion {dollars}. Will get slammed for costing nation a number of million. Earlier President stole greater than that every single day,” one Trump supporter posted on X.
One other commenter rationalized, “Don’t care. He will get extra accomplished than every other President we’ve ever seen.”
