Secret Service members wait with a motorcade before President-elect Donald Trump disembarks his plane in Hebron, Ky., on Dec. 1, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post).
The Washington Post has an in-depth look at just how much the Tiny Tyrant is costing in protection. We already know the cost of his constant weekend mini-vacations, at over three million a pop; the unbelievable cost of attempting to protect all of Trump Tower in New York City because the wife and kid refuse to move to Washington, and the constant and mounting cost of following the other Trump kids all over the world, as they attempt to con people out of money.
The Secret Service has requested that additional funds be directed their way, to try and offset the enormous cost. It’s not likely to be approved by the Tiny Tyrant, so the money will have to be found elsewhere. The Secret Service doesn’t just protect the current inhabitants of the white house, it also investigates things like cybercrime, and missing and exploited children cases. It rather looks like those things won’t be investigated much now.
The U.S. Secret Service requested $60 million in additional funding for the next year, offering the most precise estimate yet of the escalating costs for travel and protection resulting from the unusually complicated lifestyle of the Trump family, according to internal agency documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
Nearly half of the additional money, $26.8 million, would pay to protect President Trump’s family and private home in New York’s Trump Tower, the documents show, while $33 million would be spent on travel costs incurred by “the president, vice president and other visiting heads of state.”
The documents, part of the Secret Service’s request for the fiscal 2018 budget, reflect the costly surprise facing Secret Service agents tasked with guarding the president’s large and far-flung family, accommodating their ambitious travel schedules and fortifying the three-floor Manhattan penthouse where first lady Melania Trump and her son, Barron, live.
Trump has spent most of his weekends since inauguration at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, and his sons have traveled the world to promote Trump properties with Secret Service agents in tow.
Go have a read, and see just how much your pockets are being picked.
There’s also Ivanka…
It’s a general cost, protecting the Dear Leader’s extended family. Trump certainly makes it worse. I feel bad for the people who also use the airport he’s flying in and out of -- they usually completely fuck up traffic.
Oligarchs gotta oligarch. The guy’s gonna insist on a gilded tumbril, I bet.
Yes, well, little Ivana has moved into the white house now, at least during daytime, I guess. She has her own office and security clearance.
That’s so damn creepy, I don’t even know what to say about it. There’s the whole incest by proxy business (when an adult parent, usually a father, continually comments on the physical attributes of a daughter), and the refusal of his actual wife to move in, so daughter moves in. Yikes.
Think how much they’re going to be spending, now, on scanning for bugs.
Also, the people who actually live and work in Palm Beach are so frustrated, they are being put out of business by Trump’s constant weekend appearances, so they’ve been discussing levying a huge tax on the Tiny Tyrant, to try and recoup some of what it’s costing them.
In an article some time ago in the Grauniad on the costs, it was pointed out there is a small (private?) airfield near Mar-a-Lago which has to closed completely every time hair furor masturbates. That, of course, annoys the users, one of which is a local skywriting(?) company who cannot then fulfill their contracts. I don’t recall the precise amount, but it was in the tens(?) of thousands of dollars they lost every time teh trum-prat invades. (Apologies for not bothering to dig up the article.)
Caine@#2:
I remember when some people complained that Hillary Clinton was getting power (during Clinton 1) and it was inappropriate for her to be messing with healthcare because she was first lady and had married the job… It’s odd that nobody is complaining about nepotrumpism. Must be they don’t actually care and never did.
they’ve been discussing levying a huge tax on the Tiny Tyrant
What they need is called a MANPAD.
When I was reading about Ivanka getting an office in the White House despite not being an employee and not being voted official representative, I wanted to scream at the monitor “How much more obvious does this have to get for Trump voters to catch on?”.
Do they even know what “conflict of interests” means?
Charly:
Oh, I’m pretty sure they do, they just don’t care.
Security for the president, pah, unecessary cost. Just like healthcare, education and social support networks: slash it, cut it, kill it off entirely. After all Trump’s
obviousself-proclaimed greatness and popularity clearly show that all this security is superfluous. Everybody loves Trump in spite of what (clearly fake) approval ratings and the general global headshaking over Trump’s presidency may indicate. Besides, between the border wall and travel restrictions America is going to be the safest country ever, so noone, not even the president, will have to worry about security ever again.The money thus saved can be spent on a variety of worthwhile things, e.g. gilded toothpicks for the White House, flags for orphans or another .1% (or something) increase of the military budget. That’s a sadly unimpressive percentages on account of the already existing budget but will no doubt buy some vital piece of half-baked military hardware or pay for one hour’s worth of war.
That’S a whole new meaning to “family values”