About the Trump Golf Tracker

Our Mission

Is Trump Golfing Today? is a non-partisan, fact-based tracker that documents Donald Trump's golf outings during his presidency. Our goal is to provide transparent, verifiable data about how the president spends his time and how much it costs taxpayers.

Why This Matters

Presidential time and taxpayer money are matters of public interest. Donald Trump frequently criticized President Obama for playing golf, promising voters he would be "too busy" to golf if elected. Tracking whether these promises align with actions is a fundamental aspect of governmental accountability.

Trump's Own Words

"I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf." — Trump, August 2016
"I would rarely leave the White House because there's so much work to be done." — Trump, 2015
"Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf?" — Trump tweet, October 2014

Methodology

How We Track Golf Club Visits

Each visit is verified through multiple sources before being added to our database. We primarily rely on:

Pool reports: Official reports from White House press pool members who travel with the president
News photographs: Images of Trump at golf clubs published by credible news organizations
Public statements: Announcements from the White House or Trump himself
Golf course confirmation: Reports from golf course staff or other reliable witnesses

What Counts as a Visit

A day is counted when the president was present at a golf club, based on the public presidential calendar and the sources above. The metric is presence at a golf property, not confirmed rounds of play — actual rounds and scores are rarely disclosed publicly, but visits to golf clubs are documented in pool reports, photographs, and the official schedule.

Note: Each calendar day counts at most once, regardless of how many times the president visited the property that day. We do not count days where the president was at the broader resort (e.g., Mar-a-Lago) without going to its adjacent golf course.

Data Quality & Known Limitations

What we count vs. what actually happened

Our headline number is visits to a Trump golf property, not confirmed rounds played. We use visits because that's what the public record consistently shows; actual rounds and scores are rarely disclosed. A visit always counts as taxpayer-funded travel to the property, even when the president doesn't pick up a club, since Secret Service, Air Force One, motorcade, and lodging costs are the same either way.

Each card's “Tap for breakdown” popup splits visits into confirmed golf(an independent source — news photo, pool report, social post — observed activity) and club presence only (he was at the property per the calendar, but no independent source observed golf specifically).

The November 30, 2025 source-quality break

Through November 30, 2025, our upstream source — the Factbase presidential calendar — posted golf-property visits on the day they occurred. They were almost always accompanied by independent corroboration: news articles, pool photos, video.

Starting December 1, 2025, those calendar entries have appeared days or weeks after the date in question, with no accompanying news coverage, photos, or video. We don't know why the source's posting cadence changed. We continue to include these visits in the totals, but they're visually flagged (with a striped pattern in the calendar) and called out separately in the “total visits” breakdown as unverified.

Treat any visit dated December 1, 2025 or later as unverified. If you have a primary source (photo, pool report, news article) that confirms or disputes one of these dates, please email us — we'll mark it accordingly.

What we don't know

Whether each visit was actually a round of golf. Some visits are for lunch, meetings with members, or attending events at the property.
Scores and number of holes.The White House does not disclose these, and we don't guess.
Why the source changed its posting cadence on December 1, 2025. We've seen no public explanation from Factbase or the White House.
True taxpayer cost for any single trip.Our cost figures are modeled from the GAO's 2019 Mar-a-Lago analysis. Trips to other properties use scaled estimates, not itemized receipts.

We document these limitations openly because the goal of this tracker is transparency, not advocacy. If something here is wrong, we want to fix it — please email [email protected].

Cost Calculations

Our cost estimates are based on:

GAO Report GAO-19-178: Government Accountability Office analysis of four Mar-a-Lago trips, establishing a baseline cost of $3.4 million per weekend trip to Florida
Location-based adjustments: Trips to different locations cost different amounts based on flight distance, aircraft requirements, and security needs
Conservative estimates: We use the lower end of cost ranges when multiple estimates exist

Cost Components

Presidential golf trip costs typically include:

Air Force One operation costs (~$200,000/hour flight time)
C-17/C-5M cargo planes to transport presidential motorcade
Marine One helicopter operations
Secret Service personnel overtime and per diem
Local law enforcement coordination
Coast Guard operations (for coastal properties)
Advance team travel and logistics

Data Sources & Verification

Every golf day in our database includes a link to its source. We prioritize sources in this order:

Factbase/Rollcall Presidential Calendar: The official presidential public schedule compiled by Factbase at rollcall.com/factbase/trump/topic/calendar/
Official White House pool reports
Major news organizations (AP, Reuters, NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, etc.)
Photographic evidence from credible sources
Golf course reports and social media (verified accounts only)

Accuracy & Corrections

We strive for 100% accuracy. If you find an error in our data, please email us at [email protected] with:

The specific date in question
What you believe is incorrect
A link to a credible source supporting the correction

We review all submissions and issue corrections when warranted.

What We're NOT

Not a political organization: We don't endorse candidates or take political donations
Not making judgments: We present data; you draw conclusions
Not exclusive: Golf data is just one metric of presidential activity

Project Information

Data Usage

All data on this site is freely available for journalists, researchers, and the public. We encourage fact-checking, verification, and republication of our data with attribution.

Technical Implementation

This site is built with Next.js and TypeScript, statically generated for fast performance, and hosted for maximum uptime. The codebase is optimized for accessibility (WCAG 2.1 compliant) and mobile devices.