Exclusive: US taxpayers spent $30,000 on golf cart rentals for Secret Service at Trump’s resort in Ireland, records show
The American public spent nearly $30,000 on “urgent” golf cart rentals for Donald Trump’s Secret Service detail as the president visited his eponymous country club in Doonbeg, Ireland, according to federal procurement records reviewed by The Independent.
“POTUS DOONBEG GOLF CARTS URGENT USSS,” reads the contract summary, which obligated $26,353.47 in taxpayer funds for the transaction.
Trump, who made an estimated $2.2 billion last year, more than triple his 2024 income, was in Doonbeg to watch the final rounds of the Amgen Irish Open. (Trump himself was ferried around the Doonbeg links in an armored cart nicknamed “Golf Force One.”)
Golf cart rentals (and occasionally, porta-potties) have always comprised a portion of the expense. However, the carts are usually provided by an outside vendor.
For example, in June 2025, the Secret Service allocated more than $550,000 in taxpayer dollars to rent golf carts for use in Bedminster, New Jersey, where another of Trump’s private clubs is located. The contract went to Associates Golf Car Service of Poughkeepsie, New York.
The Doonbeg rentals, on the other hand, do not list a third-party supplier.
Since returning to the White House in 2025, Trump’s golf trips have cost U.S. taxpayers almost $200 million, which includes security, transportation aboard Air Force 1, meals, and lodging, according to one analysis of publicly available data. During his first term, Trump’s golf habit set back taxpayers a total of $151.5 million, the Government Accountability Office found.
A Secret Service spokesman did not respond Friday to a request for comment.
Trump’s latest trip to Ireland began September 12 in Dublin, where he met separately with Prime Minister Micheál Martin and President Catherine Connolly, amid massive protests attended by thousands. He then went to the Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg, a small village on the country’s Atlantic coast, to attend the final day of the Irish Open.
There, Trump’s Secret Service detail spent $22,957 on rooms, according to federal contracting records.
The expenditures run counter to a past promise by Eric Trump, who now runs the Trump Organization with older brother Don Jr., who insisted that his father’s Secret Service agents “stay at our properties for free,” or, “like, cost for housekeeping.”
In fact, Trump reportedly charged the Secret Service “far more” for accommodations at his properties than other guests paid for the same rooms.
“Not only did President Trump’s hotel often charge the Secret Service far more than authorized federal government rates, the hotel also charged the agency far more than hundreds of other patrons, including members of a foreign royal family and a Chinese business interest,” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee alleged in a 2024 report.
“[T]hen-President Trump treated the Secret Service as an ATM,” the report said.
Trump’s visit prompted “one of the biggest policing and security operations implemented by An Garda Síochána,” the country’s national law enforcement agency said.
As in Dublin, Trump’s presence in Doonbeg was also met with anger, drawing about 100 protesters to the hamlet of 297 people.
“I’m here because Trump is the exact opposite of everything I stand for as a follower of Jesus,” one demonstrator, a Methodist minister from Galway, told BBC News.
Eric Trump, on the other hand, argued that there was more love than hate in the area for his dad.
“Go down to Morrissey's tavern in Doonbeg and hear from a real Irish person as to whether or not they like President Trump and the Trump family, go have them attest to what we've done for the country and what we've invested in the country and the love and respect that our family has always shown them,” he told Irish broadcaster RTE.
He dismissed the demonstrators, without evidence, as “paid to protest,” before veering off into an ad hominem attack on actress Rosie O’Donnell.
The president, who inserted himself into one of Ireland’s thorniest subjects by opining that Irish reunification would be “a very cool thing,” returned September 14 to the United States.
He told reporters that he would return to Ireland in 2027 to attend the Ryder Cup, at Limerick’s Adare Manor, a golf club and resort owned by Irish billionaire J.P. McManus – although, Trump said, he thought the tournament should instead be held at his own course in Scotland.
