An official accounting of Trump’s golf and customer service time

It remains the case that President Trump doesn’t particularly seem to like the White House.

During his first time in office, there was reporting to this effect; in 2017, he allegedly told members of his New Jersey golf club that the building was a “dump.” Trump denied this, for that’s worth. During his second term in office, though, it’s become harder to do so. Trump has invested an enormous amount of time and an increasing amount of money on remaking the building in the image of one of his privately owned venues, from the gilded Oval Office tchotchkes to the Mar-a-Lago-esque patio-ification of the Rose Garden.

And yet he still spends a lot of time in other places. During his first administration, I tracked the number of times he left the executive mansion to visit (almost invariably) one of the golf courses or clubs owned by the Trump Organization. He did so a lot, likely playing 45 rounds of golf and visiting a Trump-owned property on all or part of 75 days through Aug. 31, 2017.

As of the end of this August, he’s spent all or part of 86 days during his second term at Trump Organization properties, likely including 60 rounds of golf. See, I’m tracking these numbers during his second term, too, as you can see on the (regularly updated) interactive below.

If you mouseover (or, on a phone, click) any date above, it will show you where Trump went (if anywhere). Visits are color-coded by region mostly to give you a sense of where he’s headed: green for Florida, yellow for New York-New Jersey, pink for his club near D.C. I also slightly rounded weekend days so that they stood out more obviously. The data centrally comes from the Roll Call database of Trump’s schedule, with some golf outings confirmed separately.

One important note: I use the term “likely played golf” because we don’t always know whether Trump actually did. During the Obama administration — a period during which Trump regularly inveighed against the president’s golf habit — the public was informed about Obama’s playing partners (almost always on public or government-owned courses). Trump has never been similarly transparent so we are often left to speculate on whether he actually played. History has shown, though, that assuming he did is often the safest bet.

Defenders of the president will ask why this matters. There’s the issue of cost, of course; flying to Mar-a-Lago should be more of an affront to the purportedly cost-savings-focused president than staying in the house taxpayers already fund. But the more distinctive issue is that Trump’s visits to Trump properties are free advertising for his private business, hinting at and often explicitly offering the chance to speak with and influence the country’s chief executive. At one point, you will recall, the president openly sold the opportunity to come dine with him at one of his private clubs.

This tracker will always be available at pbump.net/outofoffice/. If there are particular metrics you’d like me to track, please let me know. And if you’d like to see your company exempt from tariffs? Well, maybe try becoming a member of a Trump Organization club.

Photo: Bryson DeChambeau hits balls on the South Lawn of the White House for some reason, June 2, 2025. (White House Photo/Joyce N. Boghosian)