Because a wizened fortune teller once told Donald Trump that he would die unless he visited one of his golf resorts at least once per week, a rough approximation of the “vampire must sleep on the dirt of his home country” restrictions on immortality, Donald Trump is closing out the year by visiting one of his golf resorts. Specifically, he flew off to the international spy and lobbyist haven of Mar-a-Lago. Yet again.
That means that the American public has now spent over $118 million sending Donald Trump to his own for-profit real estate holdings during the first three years of his term. That covers travel to and from Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster, his Scotland and Ireland resorts; his Secret Service protection; the staff he takes with him; and so forth. Whenever Trump travels to one of his properties, his necessary staff must book rooms there as well, and the Secret Service gets charged for everything from golf carts to meals. And we don’t know how much of that Donald Trump is personally pocketing because he won’t tell us. At a bare minimum, it’s in the millions.
To give some idea of just how much money $118 million is, that is more than 12 Starbucks coffees. Or, as HuffPo’s S.V. Date puts it, it is “the equivalent of 296 years of the $400,000 presidential salary that his supporters often boast he is not taking.” Continue reading