With travel alone costing $1m, what price each presidential round of golf?

As Trump makes his sixth Mar-a-Lago visit since his inauguration, the bills mount up

- Richard Luscombe Miami

It has become a familiar routine for the Palm Beach County sheriff, Ric Bradshaw, and his deputies. Almost every Tuesday in recent weeks, the Federal Aviation Administration has posted to its website a formal “notice to airmen” advising of upcoming flight restrictions over south Florida, signalling once again to those who must protect him that Donald Trump is on his way to Mar-a-Lago for another weekend of golf.

The president is at his mansion again this weekend, his sixth visit to Florida and the golf courses he owns since his 20 January inauguration.

His increasingly frequent and dis-ruptive trips home are fast becom-ing a drain on county resources, obliging Bradshaw to put helicop-ters in the air, extra manpower on the ground and boats on both sides of Trump’s opulent mansion sand-wiched between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal Waterway almost contin-uously. The demands from the Secret Service to help them protect Trump, and the president's family and entou-rage, are “substantial”, the sheriff told county commissioners last month, just before the president flew in for an extended six-day visit.

“They request it, and then we pro-vide it. It’s expensive, but we don’t really have a choice,” Bradshaw said.

The sheriff's office declined to immediately provide the Observer with a detailed breakdown of its expendi-ture, but the daily overtime bill alone has previously been reported to be $240,000. Commissioners approved Bradshaw’s “urgent request” of $45m to provide security for Trump's visits through November, an invoice he said was certain to rise.