Taxpayers spent $102 million on Trump golfing despite his promise not to golf

Trump has spent over $102 million in tax dollars on his golfing habit — even though he boasted before taking office that he wouldn’t play golf once he was elected president.

HuffPost reported on Wednesday that taxpayers have spent $81 million for Trump to take golf vacations in Florida, $17 million in New Jersey, $1 million in Los Angeles, and $3 million in Scotland.

Trump’s travels rack up costs for expenses including fuel for Air Force One and the Marine helicopters that transport him, transportation costs for the presidential limousine and other associated vehicles, as well as Coast Guard patrols that have to be put in place to secure his golf environs.

Trump has spent twice as many days golfing as President Barack Obama had by the same point in his presidency, and taxpayers have spent three times as much on Trump’s golf outings as on Obama’s. That’s partly because when Obama went golfing, he usually played at military bases and not at private clubs.

When he was running for president, however, Trump often attacked Obama for golfing.

“With all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf,” Trump wrote in 2014.

Trump also repeatedly vowed that he wouldn’t go on golf trips if elected president.

“I love golf, but if I were in the White House, I don’t think I’d ever see Turnberry [golf club] again,” Trump said in February 2016. “I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off.”

“There won’t be time to go on vacations, there won’t be time to go golfing all the time,” Trump said in June 2015.

“I’m not going to play much golf, because there’s a lot of work to be done,” Trump told South Carolina voters in February 2016.

As with many of his other campaign promises and rhetoric, Trump’s actions since taking office show that he was simply lying.

What’s more, almost all of Trump’s time playing golf was spent at the resorts he still owns, meaning he also could have personally profited from the luxury travel.

“It’s obviously an incredible waste of money,” Public Citizen president Robert Weissman told HuffPost.

But Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), a key Trump ally in Congress, was dismissive of the concerns that Trump is wasting money.

“There’s a lot more important things to worry about than the rounding errors that we sometimes have on these things,” he said.

Trump golfs (and cheats at it) on the taxpayer’s dime and profits from it — even though, as he once put it, there is “a lot of work to be done.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.