The information from that Indian article was quickly picked up and reported as fact by a number of media outlets in the U.S. and elsewhere, but its veracity is highly questionable. Any presidential trip abroad (the purpose of this trip is official business, not a personal "vacation," as claimed by some sources) involves considerable expense to transport and house security officials and presidential aides and staffers, and those costs will likely be on the higher side for this trip since President Obama will be attending the G20 Summit in Seoul, South Korea, along with other world leaders (which requires the presence of additional numbers of U.S. government officials as well as heightened security). However, citing a cost figure of $200 million per day stretches credulity to the breaking point: That number would entail a total outlay of $400 million for the two-day visit (a whopping $2 billion if the cost were applied across the entire ten-day trip), and even if President Obama were accompanied by a prodigious 3,000-person entourage, with the U.S. government picking up the entire tab for all of them, the U.S. would have to be spending the unbelievably staggering sum of $66,000 per person per day to reach that figure. Moreover, the only source for that dollar amount is a single foreign news report which quotes an anonymous Indian official and provides no detail whatsoever (or even a general explanation) about how the $200 million sum was derived.
Additionally, U.S. officials disclaimed numeric figures cited for the President's Asian visit as "wildly inflated" and "absurd"
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor shot down the $200 million-a-day figure: "The numbers reported in this article have no basis in reality. Due to security concerns, we are unable to outline details associated with security procedures and costs, but it's safe to say these numbers are wildly inflated," Vietor said.
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