Melania Trump‘s international travels are once again making headlines—for the wrong reason.
Just a month after the First Lady returned to the U.S. from an African tour with a six-figure price tag, a previous trip of hers, to Toronto, is now coming under scrutiny for its cost. Last year, Melania Trump visited the Canadian city as a U.S. representative at the Invictus Games—a charity sporting event for veterans—where she first met Price Harry and Meghan Markle. It was the first time the royal couple were out in public together.
But the meeting will now be remembered for Trump’s enormous bill to taxpayers. Government records obtained by Quartz show that her hotel bill totaled approximately $174,000, which did not include an additional $18,000 spent on her advance team or her $21,000 travel bill.
Even more shocking, the First Lady’s official itinerary shows that she arrived in Canada at about noon and was back in Washington, D.C., around midnight—meaning she didn’t even spend the night in the hotel. When pressed about the First Lady’s seemingly exorbitant expenses by Quartz, her spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, only gave a vague response.
“What I can tell you is that when the President or First Lady travels, there are people who travel ahead on the advance team to ensure safety measures, medical care, communications, motorcade needs and logistics are all in place,” Grisham said. “Mrs. Trump travels with a much smaller contingent of staff than that of her predecessors, but the entities I mentioned above are legally required for all official travel.”
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