Remember when Donald Trump joked at President Obama’s expense, that he “played more golf last year than Tiger Woods?” Or when he called Obama “The habitual vacationer”?
Like this one, just last year:
While our wonderful president was out playing golf all day, the TSA is falling apart, just like our government! Airports a total disaster!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 21, 2016
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It turns out Donald Trump plays more golf than President Obama. A lot more. And Trump’s hypocrisy it’s costing American taxpayers a fortune.
“Trump [is] on pace to surpass 8 years of Obama’s travel spending in 1 year,” according to CNN. Here is the math:
Given variations in each trip, estimating the security costs around a presidential trip is difficult. But a 2016 Government Accountability Office report about a four-day trip Obama took to Florida in 2013 — one similar to Trump’s trips — found the total cost to the Secret Service and Coast Guard was $3.6 million.
To date, Trump has spent six weekends — and a total of 21 days — at Mar-A-Lago, his private Palm Beach club. The total estimated costs for those trips are around $21.6 million.
In eight years, Obama spent $97 million for travel. According to CNN, “Trump’s frequent weekend travel makes it all but certain the 45th President will surpass Obama’s spending in his first term, likely within months.”
And the only thing that will save us from those $3 million-plus each Mar-a-Lago trips is hot weather. Trump doesn’t want to be in Florida when it’s hot and muggy by the end of May.
Not that the travel will cease. It is suspected he will impose on New York City taxpayers at that point, spending more time at Trump Tower creating traffic problems.
Or golfing at his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. Rest assured, Donald Trump has no plans to stop spending Americans’ tax dollars and putting his own luxury lifestyle on hold.
Which brings to mind this particularly hypocritical tweet from 2014:
We pay for Obama's travel so he can fundraise millions so Democrats can run on lies. Then we pay for his golf.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2014
There are, by one count, a whopping 38 Donald Trump tweets pertaining to President Obama’s golf game. If you print them all out, that’s a bigly pile of hypocrisy.
The Trump Golf Count now has him at 17 visits and 9 golf outings totaling more than 69 hours. At this rate, it won’t be long before Trump has golfed more than 38 times at our expense.
Donald Trump has told a lot of lies but among the biggest was his claim that “I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to go play golf.”
In his final campaign appearance on November 7, Trump stuck it to Obama again, claiming,
“I mean he’s played more golf than most people on the PGA Tour, this guy. What is it, over 300 rounds? Hey, look, it’s good. Golf is fine. But always play with leaders of countries and people that can help us! Don’t play with your friends all the time.”
It’s okay to golf with Russian spies though, you can be sure.
The truth is, the promise that he would be too busy working for us to golf was possibly the first thing to land in the Oval Office waste basket.
Upon his taking office, he went right to playing golf instead of working for you, visited his golf courses 6 times in his first month in office, and the pace hasn’t slackened yet.
If there is to be a travel ban, perhaps it should be imposed on Donald Trump’s very expensive vacation habits.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
