‘Wasteful Spending’: Donald Trump spends $200M on golf, while GOP guts cancer research and begs for another $200B to bomb Middle East
A question of priorities.
Donald Trump’s golf habit has now cost U.S. taxpayers at least $101.2 million in travel and security expenses since his return to office, a figure that’s already two-thirds of his first-term total for golf. This puts him on track to spend a whopping $300 million by the end of his second term. It’s something else to see the president arrive at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, marking his 56th visit there since his January 2025 inauguration.
According to HuffPost, he’s now spent 110 days on a golf course he owns. This milestone comes at a pretty tough time. Gas prices nationwide have surged by roughly 80 cents a gallon in just a month, a consequence of the United States–Israeli war on Iran. In the last week, the White House has been reviewing a Pentagon request for about $200 billion to support new military action.
It is critical to note that the proposed budget for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for fiscal year 2026 is $4,530.8 million, a massive decrease of $2,690.4 million, or 37.3%, from the previous year. While the president submits budget requests and spending priorities, it’s Congress that provides the funding, whether it’s mandatory spending or discretionary funding. Still, the significant cuts proposed for cancer research hit hard when so much is being spent elsewhere.
As expected, these numbers have become a huge cause for concern
Jordan Libowitz with the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington watchdog group really hit the nail on the head, saying, “At a time when gas prices are spiking and Americans across the country find themselves in an ever-worsening affordability crisis, the president has burned through over $100 million in taxpayer money in order to make promotional appearances at his golf courses and hobnob with millionaires and billionaires.”
Trump needed two full years to reach the $100 million mark in his first term. Back then, he played golf a total of 293 days at his own courses, costing taxpayers $151.5 million. The current figures for transportation and security for these trips are based on reports to Congress from his first term. In his second term, Trump has made 17 trips exclusively to his Mar-a-Lago country club home in Palm Beach, which is close to his courses in West Palm Beach and Jupiter.
Of all his regular golf destinations, Mar-a-Lago is the most expensive, ringing in at $3.4 million per trip. This is mainly because of the huge expense involved in patrolling both the Atlantic Ocean off the Palm Beach coast and the Intracoastal Waterway that separates the barrier island from the mainland. When the president is there, a Coast Guard ship is stationed offshore, and smaller law enforcement vessels with mounted guns patrol the Intracoastal.
His most expensive trip to date was a $9.7 million jaunt to his resorts in Scotland last summer, which included the grand opening of a new course at his Aberdeen property. The White House’s government staff even helped promote that event for his for-profit business.
In recent weeks, the White House started categorizing Trump’s golf outings as “executive time,” a phrase that pops up in his public schedule almost daily. When asked what this means, the White House press office gave an incredibly vague, unsigned statement: “Executive time refers to executive time.”
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
