It is a given that we pay the salaries and, when necessary, the expenses of the men and women who guard the president of the United States. What’s not a given – or shouldn’t be, anyway – is that we also line the president’s pockets at the same time.
Donald Trump unfortunately still is our president, and when he isn’t in the White House – which is actually often as he jets around among his own resorts and golf clubs – Trump’s company bills U.S. taxpayers for Secret Service room and board at rates as high as $650 a night, according to federal records and what people who’ve seen the receipts tell reporters with The Washington Post.
“Those charges show Trump has “an unprecedented – and largely hidden – business relationship with his own government,” The Post writes. This happens when Trump visits his clubs in Palm Beach, Florida, and Bedminster, New Jersey, because the Secret Service needs space to post guards and store equipment.
For instance, according to receipts from 2017 at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, the Secret Service was charged $17,000 a month to use a three-bedroom cottage on the property, an unusually high rent for homes in that area, according to The Post. Trump’s company billed the government even for days when Trump wasn’t there.
The payments don’t match what the Trump Organization has said: “If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free – meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,” Trump’s son Eric told Yahoo Finance last year.