Federal workers cast Trump's many Mar-a-Lago trips as working from home [View all]

Source: NBC News

March 15, 2025, 7:15 PM EDT


One of President Donald Trump’s first actions upon entering the White House was to order federal employees to return to the office. The government workforce, he has repeatedly contended, could not be productive from home.

“I happen to be a believer that you have to go to work. I don’t think you can work from home,” Trump said on Feb. 11. “Nobody’s going to work from home, they’re going to be going out, they’re going to play tennis, they’re going to play golf. They’re going to do a lot of things. They’re not working.”

Three days later, Trump traveled to his sprawling Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, where he remained for parts of six consecutive days, according to an NBC News tracker. On one of the days, Trump signed two executive orders and a memorandum. He also held an impromptu press conference. In other words, he worked from home. That weekend, he did what he accused federal workers of doing: He went golfing. Between Feb. 14 and Feb. 19, he golfed on four different days.

While he is far from the first president to do so, each golfing trip is a cost to taxpayers. Before that, Trump hosted Republican senators at Mar-a-Lago in early February, where he delivered remarks including an update on his administration’s cost-cutting efforts. Some federal workers said Trump’s frequent trips to his luxury estate in Florida — racking up millions of dollars in security and transportation costs — while ordering millions of government employees back to the office, reeked of hypocrisy.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/federal-workers-cast-trump-mar-lago-trips-working-home-rcna194641