Trump Family Travel vs Puerto Rico Aid Study

We determined how many times the Trump family’s taxpayer-funded travel in 2017 could have gotten a US cargo ship of aid from Florida to victims in Puerto Rico.

Methodology:

We wanted to see how much it would cost (in terms of fuel) to send the largest running US cargo ship to Puerto Rico from Florida with relief aid. We determined the distance between Florida and Puerto Rico to be 1149.537 miles. At .0046 nautical miles to the gallon, this trip would require 249899.347 gallons of fuel. At approximately $321 per gallon, the total amount to send this cargo ship of aid one-way would be $249,899.

Because of Trump’s recent statements regarding hurricane Maria and the ‘very large ocean’ between us, as well as ongoing news regarding his family’s travel expenditures, we decided to look at how many times the Trump family’s taxpayer-funded travel could have gotten the aforementioned cargo ship between Florida and Puerto Rico. We analyzed government reports on Trump family travel spending, and detailed each family member’s travel expenditures by occasion and cost to determine the total amount for each individual. Whenever possible we split up these travel expenditures by costs specific to airfare. We divided the total cost per individual by $249,899 to find out how many times (or how far) the cargo ship could get with just these funds.

Take President Trump for example. Trump took four trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort between February 3rd and March 19th. His airfare alone cost between $580,000 and $812,000 per trip. Trump’s non Mar-a-Lago travel expenses cost taxpayers a total of around $29,000,000, totaling around $32,000,000. When we divided this total by $249,899, we determined that Trump’s travel alone could have paid for a cargo ship to bring relief aid from Florida to Puerto Rico approximately 128 times.