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How Much Does It Cost to Protect the Trump Family?
Now, this is a pretty delicate topic, considering that, yeah, he’s the President of the United States and his family does in fact need protection. However, do they need to continue living such an extravagant lifestyle at the expense of the taxpayer?
That’s, at least, the question posed by the Washington Post. And, before you criticize me for going with something the Mainstream Media reports, they directly quote Judicial Watch, a right-leaning advocacy group.
In New York, the city is paying $500,000 a day to guard Trump Tower, according to police officials’ estimates, an amount that could reach $183 million a year.
This month, The Post reported that Secret Service and U.S. embassy staffers paid nearly $100,000 in hotel-room bills to support Eric Trump’s trip to promote a Trump-brand condo tower in Uruguay.
That’s a lot. Sure, Obama had some expensive vacations – a single family trip to Hawaii alone cost taxpayers more than $4 million. But, $183 million per year? That’s an insane amount. And that’s where Judicial Watch comes in.
“This is an expensive way to conduct business, and the president should recognize that,” said Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, which closely tracked President Barack Obama’s family vacation costs and said that it intends to continue the effort for the Trump administration.
“The unique thing about President Trump is that he knows what it costs to run a plane.” Fitton added, noting that Trump should consider using the presidential retreat of Camp David, a short helicopter ride from the White House, or even his golf course in Northern Virginia. Of Mar-a-Lago, Fitton said, “Going down there ain’t free.”
This is a problem for small-government, fiscal conservatives. A runaway government addicted to spending, with deficits and debt all around, is taking on another massive cost both at the local and the federal level. The sad part is that conservatives who frequently got on to Barack Obama for that Hawaii vacation (and every other vacations) will say nothing about this cost, which far exceeds the Obamas.
Fitton is right that all this is a known quantity to Donald Trump. He knows what these things cost, and yet he is determined to spend a lot of time in the “Winter White House” at Mar-a-Lago, as well as New York, and he knows his family’s lifestyle won’t get any less extravagant.
It’s unfortunate, because there will inevitably be good fiscal conservatives who will otherwise twist themselves in complex (and illegal in some states) ways just to defend it.
The post How Much Does It Cost to Protect the Trump Family? appeared first on RedState.
Source: http://www.redstate.com/joesquire/2017/02/17/much-cost-protect-trump-family/
