Secret Service costs for presidential travel continue to mount

Secret Service costs for presidential travel continue to mount

Keeping the president and his family safe is never cheap — but Donald Trump is racking up quite a bill for taxpayers during the first 100 days of his presidency.

So far, President Trump has spent 21 days at his Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida, putting the 45th president on pace to surpass his predecessor’s first-term travel spending in just months.

“We are estimating that his trips to Mar-a-Lago cost about $1 million a trip,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, who has been tracking the cost of presidential travel for years.

“Based on numbers from the air force, it costs about $142,000 an hour for Air Force one to move back and forth from Washington DC and on top of that, we’ve estimated about $250,000 in secret service costs,” Fitton explained.

Peter Jaworski, a business ethics professor at Georgetown University says President Trump’s travel is more expensive than any other president in history.

“Every president has to go on vacation, everybody needs a bit of time off. What’s unethical about Donald Trump’s trips is the expense that’s involved,” Jaworski explained.

Jaworski says a lot of the cost is associated with the location of the travel.

“You have to have the Coast Guard involved because it’s right on the ocean so it’s more expensive,” he said.