Donald Trump once addressed one of his campaign rally crowds in Iowa by criticizing President Obama's vacations during his presidency, saying, "If you're in the White House, who wants to take a vacation? When there's so much work to be done?"

"You're in the White House," he said. "What's better than the White House? Why these vacations?"

It seems that Donald Trump has failed to take his own advice.Trump, although he has not been in office very long, has already taken seven trips and counting to what he calls the ''winter White House'. Since his inauguration in January, Donald Trump has spent seven our of the thirteen weekends of his presidency at his Palm Beach, Florida estate. According to NBC News' estimates by Sunday Trump will have spent 28 percent of his term traveling to or staying at Mar-a-Lago.

Presidents have always traveled on the tax payer's dollar. George W. Bush frequently visited his Crawford Texas Ranch, and Obama, as stated previously took golf trips of his own. However, there is criticism of Trump's travel being unprecedented due to the fact he his visiting his own private commercial property. According to ethics expert Steve Schooner, "It's just another example of his consistent efforts to exploit public office for private gain. He's using his official office and the fact that people have to travel with him, meet him, and follow him to promote his commercial enterprise, in this case his privately owned club."

But just how much does his ethically questionable trips cost? They estimate the cost of a back-and-forth trip from Washington to Palm Beach at about $1 million, with Air Force One costing $142,380 per hour (Judicial Watch says it acquired this information from Freedom of Information Act request). Other estimates put each trip's price tag as high as $3 million. Trump is not the only president who was ever in office to high price tag when it comes to traveling. The White House will not say how much Trump's trips cost (I wonder why), but there are estimates by the Government Accountability Office that show a weekend trip taken by President Obama in 2013 to Chicago and South Florida cost about $3.6 million.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, also reportedly told NBC that each day President Trump spends in Mar-a-Lago costs his department $60,000. In fact, one of Trump's summits with President Xi hit Palm Beach pretty hard, costing the county about 1.5 million. There is no doubt that this becomes a huge financial burden for local tax payers in this area, as well as for the whole country.

In eight years of Presidency, Barack Obama's travel expenses added up to at least 97 million. At the rate Trump is going, he will beat Obama's record with flying colors.

Washingtonpost.com