Tens of millions of American sports fans could only dream of affording the big-event doubleheader President Donald Trump did over an eight-day stretch this month. They should be frustrated by the reality that it was their money that allowed him do it.

A week after becoming the first sitting president to attend the National Football League’s biggest game — the Philadelphia Eagles’ victory in Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans — Trump spent another Sunday making the rounds at a sport’s marquee event. He drew plenty of applause and adulation as he took Air Force One for a spin over Daytona International Speedway before the start of NASCAR’s iconic Daytona 500 in Florida.

Of course, politicians and the government itself have used sporting events as public relations vehicles long before Trump’s applause grab over the last two weekends in the midst of rising prices on goods and controversy being played out in the courts over his myriad executive orders challenging the traditional separation of powers. Benjamin Harrison became the first president to attend a Major League Baseball game, and that was in 1892. The first military flyover before a game came during the 1918 World Series; Babe Ruth played in that one… for the Boston Red Sox.

Difference between then and now is, a president attending major sporting events with any kind of regularity can and should be looked at as an expensive venture, one funded by taxpayers already stretched thin and clearly frustrated by perceived government waste.

A good percentage of those taxpayers were the ones who swept Trump into a second term as president in November and are cheering him and Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk on as they seek ways to dramatically slash spending and shutter government programs they deem wasteful.

There’s no way to tell exactly what Trump attending these kinds of events cost taxpayers, but even the most conservative estimates suggest they should be kept to a minimum or avoided outright.

For example, in fiscal year 2021, the Air Force listed the cost of flying Air Force One at $177,843 per hour, according to Freedom of Information Act findings published by The War Zone, a web site the covers the defense industry. About 300 secret service agents are assigned to protect sitting presidents and vice presidents, and their yearly salaries range from about $50,000 to around $65,000.

Trump flew out of Mar-a-Lago to the Super Bowl and back to Washington aboard Air Force One, a total flight time of 5 hours, 13 minutes. At the 2021 cost of flight, that’s almost $928,000 in flight cost alone.

With mathematics and some safe assumptions, if 100 secret service agents making the average yearly wage were on hand for the Super Bowl — and that perhaps is a conservative guess, considering this is a president against whom an assassination attempt was made on the campaign trail last year — it’s in the $22,000 range just to pay the agents that day.

None of that factors into the extra cost of motorcades from airports to venues and back, any additional government-run security on-site, the reality that agents are putting in weeks worth of work in to surveil sites ahead of visits. It makes sense to estimate the cost of these trips can be counted in the tens of millions of dollars.

There are legitimate, critical job-related functions the president needs this type of travel and protection to accomplish as part of the position. Making the rounds at a football game and an automobile race should never be among them. Those benefit his popularity and public view, not the public in general.

All presidents should avoid it. But spending taxpayer money for anything short of necessities comes off as hypocritical, at best, especially for Trump, as his administration guts federal agencies and prepares to slash tax rates.

— Scranton Times-Tribune