Donald Trump has never exactly kept his personal business separate from politics, but this week he took things to a whole new level. On Tuesday, the President turned a visit to one of his own Scotland golf resorts into what looked like a full-blown official government event, complete with taxpayer-funded promotion and media coverage handled by his White House staff.
The whole thing? A “ribbon-cutting” ceremony at his Aberdeen golf course. And instead of it being a private or campaign affair, it showed up on the White House’s official daily schedule. Trump’s speech, where he boasted it would be “a tremendously successful place,” was broadcast live on the White House’s YouTube channel. Moments later, his team was uploading videos of him teeing off, all in real time, across official social platforms.
LMAO Trump taking questions in Scotland and is drowned out by a bagpiper….give the person all the beers! pic.twitter.com/iTsuorUc1L
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) July 28, 2025
When asked directly about the ethics of using government resources to hype up his own business, Trump brushed it off mid-flight aboard Air Force One: “I haven’t heard that. No. I haven’t heard that. Did you get to see my drive in the first hole? Pretty long. Pretty long. That’s no Joe Biden, let me tell you.”
To ethics experts, the whole thing was exactly what it looked like. “It’s the very definition of corruption,” said Norm Eisen, former top ethics lawyer in the Obama White House. “Using his official position and government resources to benefit himself.”
And if you’re wondering how the White House responded to the backlash, they didn’t. Not a word.
What makes this different from past events is just how blatant it all was. In earlier instances where Trump used his presidency to spotlight his own ventures, the White House at least tried to keep things at arm’s length.
Take April 3, when Trump headlined a dinner tied to the Saudi-funded LIV Golf tournament at his Doral resort. He arrived via Marine One after flying to Miami on Air Force One, but the event wasn’t listed as public on the schedule, and White House staff didn’t promote it.
Same goes for a May 22 dinner at his Northern Virginia golf club, this one for people who bought up the most of his cryptocurrency “meme” tokens. Again, the schedule called it a “private dinner,” and there was zero official promotion.
But this latest trip to Scotland? It was centered entirely around the grand opening of a second golf course at his Aberdeen resort. Trump’s team tried to suggest the trip was justified because of meetings with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, but those took place at Turnberry, another of his properties, hours away on the other coast. And they didn’t clash with his golf time at all.
According to HuffPost, the five-day trip cost U.S. taxpayers at least $9.7 million, and that doesn’t even include inflation. That pushes Trump’s total golf-related travel and security spending to $52 million just six months into his second term. By comparison, his first term cost Americans $152 million in total for his golf outings, all of which he insisted on hosting at his own resorts.
The idea of Trump using the presidency as a business booster isn’t new, but it’s clearly escalating. Back in his first term, he was already steering federal money toward his hotels, golf courses, and restaurants. Now, it seems like he’s leaning in even harder. And thanks to his return to power, he’s now shielded from federal prosecution, despite multiple serious legal cases still hanging over him.
He had been charged with multiple felonies for both his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and for refusing to return classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. But once Trump retook the White House, those cases were dropped, thanks to the Department of Justice’s long-standing policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
REMINDER: While America is struggling under skyrocketing prices (that he promised to lower) brought on by his own asinine tariffs, trump is off golfing in Scotland.
And that lazy, grifting, pedophile-protecting bum is playing on the taxpayer dime.pic.twitter.com/cf0w4elXqV
— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) July 27, 2025
He wasn’t so lucky in state court, though. In New York, Trump was convicted of falsifying business records tied to a $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. His former lawyer Michael Cohen actually went to federal prison for his role in the same scandal.
Trump, on the other hand? No jail time, not even a fine. And once again, his comeback bid shielded him from any real consequences.
