Q&A – The Real Cost of President Trump’s Trips to Mar-a-Lago

Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.

Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com

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Today’s Entry: Today’s question was submitted via Talkback asking for perspective on the costs associated with President Trump’s regular weekend visits to Mar-a-Lago to start his second term as president.

Bottom Line: This afternoon President Trump will once again do what he’s frequently done since becoming president. He’ll end this week with a trip back home to Mar-a-Lago, aka the Winter White House. It was a frequent gripe among President Trump’s critics during his first administration and it’s become one yet again in during the early weeks of his second administration...the costs associated with his regular weekend visits to Mar-a-Lago.

While there are a myriad of stories you can find nationally complaining about President Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago, one needs not to look any further than local news media to find a regular drumbeat of manufactured concern. Local related stories include these:

Palm Beach Post: No tally on Trump trip costs to taxpayers. But here is where to look to prep an estimate
WPEC: Another visit, another $240k/day

My favorite excerpt for why they’re making a big deal out of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago visits comes from the Post story:

Trump's supporters in the Make America Great Again movement, as well as his GOP supporters in Congress, frequently point out Trump works on his trips to the Winter White House. And they add that U.S. presidents of both parties have engaged in travel that crossed the line from governance to personal. To that end, Trump's trips, they say, are no departure from the habits of other modern presidents.

There is truth to that, but neither did Trump's predecessors sought to indiscriminately slash hundreds of billions of dollars, if not $2 trillion, from the federal government's budget as Elon Musk and his DOGE squad are pursuing. Which is why the weekend travels are again drawing scrutiny.

Right, that’s why there’s scrutiny... We’re all just supposed to conveniently forget about the related reporting during his first term in office a la this story from WPTV from 2019:

WPTV: Pres. Trump’s first 4 Mar-a-Lago trips cost taxpayers $13.6M

The anti-Trump media, which is most of them, really does think you’re stupid. The one time news media seems concerned with the level of government spending isn’t, for example, the $182 billion spent last year to cover the costs of illegal immigrants in this country, at a cost of $1,352 per federal taxpayer. Or even locally, the $660 million Floridians paid to cover the costs of healthcare for illegal immigrants statewide last year, in what amounted to $77.19 in costs per Florida household. No, it’s when Trump spends a weekend at his house.

Now, this issue has historically been a game that partisans on both sides have played. When Biden was president his frequent trips to his home in Delaware were critiqued. During Obama’s administration his golf trips were often in focus (with Trump somewhat ironically among the most critical). Ditto George W. Bush with his trips to his Crawford, Texas ranch. In reality, if critics weren’t complaining about a president’s travel, they’d likely just find another way to complain about the president. Nevertheless, today’s question was to put President Trump’s travel into perspective. So, let’s do that.

It’s a bit early to discuss what Trump’s early weeks have looked like. In reality, President Trump, a longtime snowbird, will continue to travel similarly to what he did during his first administration – when he visited Mar-a-Lago frequently during the winter while traveling to his Bedminster, New Jersey resort during the summer. But we do know what his travels ended up costing during his first term. $155 million.

For perspective, DOGE, since it’s implementation, has saved taxpayers more money every two hours than President Trump’s travels in four years. No one who advances the Trump Mar-a-Lago expense narrative is an intellectually honest person, nor are they a serious person worthy of your time and consideration. As for the local side of things...

The local cost is a real consideration in the here and now. Earlier this week the Palm Beach County commission allocated an additional $25 million to cover PBSO’s added expense associated with President Trump’s visits. The current county estimate is for additional expense of $35 to $40 million annually – which is roughly in line with the costs from Trump’s first term as president. Key to this conversation is that Palm Beach County, and all local agencies, were completely reimbursed dollar-for-dollar by the federal government during Trump’s first administration. That’s standard operating procedure that’s been in place as part of the Presidential Residence Protection Assistance program since 1913.

Yet you still have local officials, a la Democrat Greenacres Commissioner Joel Flores, spreading nonsense like this earlier this week that gained headlines locally: It’s not a slam dunk that we are going to receive the $45 million. We may very well not be receiving that money back so I just want to set that expectation that we were working diligently up there but where we stand today, there is no one clear direction this is going to happen. Right, because suddenly, for the first time since 1913 – the federal government is going to reverse policy and say that local communities are on the hook for presidential protection? What is a slam dunk is that residents were significantly better represented by Michael Barnett in that commission seat than they are by having Joel Flores in that seat.

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