Donald Trump orders Secret Service agents hot dogs while they follow him around his D.C.-area golf course—only to then bill the agency tasked with protecting the president.
At Trump National Golf Club in Lowes Island, Virginia, the 80-year-old president loves playing the role of charitable host, a Forbes report explains. Beside the tee box on the 11th hole, there’s a snack stand with hot dogs that he won’t pass up.
“He has this weird, very odd pride about how good the hot dogs are,” a former club employee told the publication. “The chef has to be out there. And he’s like, ‘Chef, get everyone a hot dog—all these guys.’”
But the billionaire, whose net worth has reportedly more than doubled since taking office for the second time, won’t pay for the hot dogs himself, the former employee said. Instead, his club will actually bill the Secret Service.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast, nor did the Secret Service, which in June had $352 million in funding redirected by the White House budget office to help pay for Trump’s ballroom, according to The Washington Post.
Trump, who has made golf a regular part of his presidency, spent his Labor Day weekend at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey—the same facility that received 18 health code violations last June.
The president’s reported billing of the Secret Service adds to the taxpayer cost of his golf habit.
Last November, an analysis by HuffPost found that Trump’s rounds since his return to office just 10 months earlier had cost American taxpayers nearly $71 million. Extrapolating that figure to the end of his term, the total would surpass $300 million—nearly double what Trump spent on sports outings during his first term.
During that period, Trump was also criticized for allegedly overcharging the Secret Service for stays at his hotels, including what was then the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
The hotel “charged as much as 300% or more above the authorized government per diem” for rooms, said an October 2024 report by Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee.
