Donald Trump isn’t afraid of putting on a show. Since returning to office he has made numerous appearances at public events. Many of them being sporting events. His very first one (of this presidency) was Super Bowl 59 between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs.
The cost of that trip is going viral.
Breaking: Donald Trump’s Super Bowl Trip Cost To Tax Payers Goes Viral In Shocking Report
US president Donald Trump became the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl in 2025. People online were eager to calculate exactly how much this trip cost American taxpayers due to the new administration’s focus on government spending:
Snopes received dozens of requests to look into the matter, with many claiming that the excursion cost anywhere from $4 million to $20 million.
Although it’s impossible to know the exact amount given how enormous the operation was and how costs may fluctuate, it is possible to estimate some of the likely costs of Trump’s Super Bowl attendance. Below, we break down what we know:
Air Force One flew to Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Feb. 7 before flying to New Orleans for the Super Bowl. According to the press pool report, the flight from Washington to Mar-a-Lago was one hour and 48 minutes.
The Feb. 9 pool report said the flight from Mar-a-Lago to New Orleans was approximately one hour and 34 minutes and the return flight from New Orleans to Washington was one hour and 51 minutes, bringing the total flight time for the journey to an estimated five hours and 13 minutes. This does not count flight time in Marine One to and from the White House.
So how much does Air Force One cost taxpayers per minute? In 2022, defense industry news outlet The War Zone published FOIA findings showing that, according to the Air Force, the president’s plane costs approximately $177,843 per flight-hour. This means that it cost taxpayers around $927,747.65 for an estimated 313 minutes of flight time to and from the Super Bowl.
An Air Force spokesperson told The War Zone that this cost includes fuel, flight consumables, and aircraft and engine overhaul. This estimate does not include calculations for other aircraft that fly alongside Air Force One, and these figures have also likely changed since 2021.
The Feb. 9 pool report said Trump’s ride in the motorcade from Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans to the Caesars Superdome took 27 minutes using backroads, and we can assume it took a similar amount of time to return to the base. It’s unknown how much the presidential motorcade costs per minute.
The number of cars in the motorcade varies from location to location, and for security reasons the Secret Service does not provide details of current presidential transportation. However, according to footage of the motorcade leaving the airport for the Superdome, at least 15 vehicles were in the procession.
At any given time, the U.S. president travels with at least 80 Secret Service members, according to Ronald Kessler, an author who specializes in the Secret Service. This is a conservative estimate, given the enormous exposure and high-stakes nature of the Super Bowl event. It’s also possible that the Secret Service upped security standards following the assassination attempt on Trump in July 2024.
However, for the sake of estimating a minimum cost, we assumed 80 Secret Service agents were present. According to the official Secret Service website, starting salaries for agents range from $49,508 to $64,009. Assuming the median salary for the 80 agents present was somewhere around $57,000 and the daily salary for a 40-hour work week is about $219, the Secret Service cost at least $17,520 for the day. Again, this is a conservative estimate.
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