A recurring theme of the last couple of years has been that of the Eric and Donald Trump Jr. castigating Hunter Biden for behavior they themselves regularly engage in. “I wish my name was Hunter Biden,” Don Jr. said on TV in October 2019. “I could go abroad, make millions off of my father’s presidency. I’d be a really rich guy.” (Reality check: He is a “really rich guy” and he did “go abroad and make millions off of [his] father’s presidency.”) “When you’re the father and your son’s entire career is dependent on that, they own you,” he similarly declared the same month, describing, again, his own situation. “If I was doing the same thing that [the Biden] family was doing, I’d be in jail,” Eric complained to Jeanine Pirro around the same time. “Why is it that every family goes into politics and enriches themselves? We’re the only family—we stopped doing deals when my father became [president]…. Guess what? All of these kids, they started doing deals when their families went into politics, and it’s sickening.” (Fact check: The Trump kids continued doing deals when their father became president, and Donald Trump’s former attorney literally said the reason Trump ran for office in the first place was to enrich himself.)
Anyway, we were reminded of all of this when Don Jr. tweeted the headline “Secret Service paying over $30K per month for Malibu mansion to protect Hunter Biden!” on Monday, and linked to an ABC News story about the costs. Yet strangely—and we’re sure this was just an oversight that he will rectify as soon as possible—Junior did not add the context that:
According to an August 2017 USA Today story, the Secret Service was unable to pay hundreds of agents “in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump’s family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast”According to that same story, “more than 1,000 agents [had] already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year”Also per USA Today, Trump’s trips to his for-profit Mar-a-Lago club were “estimated to cost at least $3 million each”That, for example, a business trip Eric Trump took to Uruguay that year set the Secret Service back nearly $100,000 for hotel rooms alone, while trips in February 2017 taken by both of the elder Trump boys, to open a new hotel in Vancouver and a golf club in Dubai were also charged to taxpayersThat, according to a 2020 budget document reviewed by D.C. watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, “the Trump family took more trips that required Secret Service protection than the Obama family took in seven” years. The Obamas, on average, took “133.3 protected trips per year,” compared to the Trump family’s 1,625 trips on average annually. And that, per the same report, “much of the Trump family’s known travel [had] been to promote Trump Organization businesses.”That the House Oversight and Reform committee found that, despite claiming the Secret Service paid nothing to stay at Trump-owned properties, the Trump organization actually charged the people protecting them as high as $650 a night.That agents protecting his sister, Ivanka Trump, and brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, were forced to shell out $100,000 to rent a toilet across the street from their Kalorama mansion because the couple wouldn’t let them use one their six and a half bathrooms.That in is final days in office, Trump “issued a directive” extending Secret Service protection to 14 of his family members who would not automatically receive it after his departure, including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and their three children; Donald Trump Jr. and his five kids; and Eric Trump, Lara Trump, and Tiffany Trump. This happened despite the fact that Ivanka and Jared, for example, reportedly made up to $640 million while working in the White House, and surely could have afforded to pay for such things out of their own pocket.We’re sure Junior will correct the record soon though.
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