Trump's travel to Mar-a-Lago alone probably cost taxpayers more than $64 million

By Philip Bump
February 5 at 3:16 PM

One of the ongoing questions about the administration of President Trump has an answer — at least, in part. Since his first month in office, with his first weekend forays to his private retreat in Florida — Mar-a-Lago — questions have been raised about the cost of those trips. This isn’t simple to figure out, given that the total includes costs incurred by various government agencies as well as costs associated with Trump’s Secret Service protection. Although estimates of the cost existed, it would require a great deal of information from across the government to come up with an accurate total.

The Government Accountability Office gathered that information. On Tuesday, it released a report looking only at Trump’s first four trips to Mar-a-Lago as president: on Feb. 3-6; Feb. 10-12; Feb. 17-20; and March 3-5, 2017.

The total? Just under $14 million, for an average cost of $3.4 million per trip. That includes about $8.5 million spent by the Defense Department and $5 million by the Department of Homeland Security. It also includes about $60,000 paid directly to Mar-a-Lago itself, $24,000 of which was for lodging for Defense Department personnel and $36,000 for operational space used by DHS.

The immediate question, of course, is how those costs extrapolate to all of Trump’s visits. This invariably leads to some apples-oranges problems, but we can make some reasonable estimates.

We know, from having tracked his trips over time, that Trump has visited Mar-a-Lago on 19 occasions as president, spanning 51 nights.



more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/05/trumps-travel-mar-a-lago-alone-likely-cost-taxpayers-more-than-million/