President Donald Trump has fleeced taxpayers more than any politician living or dead, and we may never really know the extent of just how much he has lined his own pockets. But new documents reveal that his properties charged taxpayers up to eight times more for Secret Service stays than previously known.
Not too long ago, the Washington Post published an explosive report showing that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort charged the Secret Service $650 per night per room, a staggering number that makes up part of the $130 million taxpayers have been on the hook for in the curse of the 355 days Trump has spent on his properties playing golf and partying.
In fact, Trump has played so much golf during his presidency that he recently eclipsed spending by former President Barack Obama in just three years compared to Obama’s eight.
But it turns out that Trump’s properties also charged the Secret Service an additional $396 per room for housekeeping, according to documents recently obtained by Public Citizen.
According to Salon:
The report found that taxpayers spent more than $471,000 on Trump properties, but the new receipts show that the Trump Organization charged Secret Service an additional $157,000 since 2017, bringing the total to more than $628,000.
The new figures completely contradict Eric Trump’s claim that Secret Service agents stay at Trump properties for free and are charged very low housekeeping costs.
“If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free,” Eric Trump said in a statement last year. “So everywhere that he goes, if he stays at one of his places, the government actually spends, meaning it saves a fortune because if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like $50.”
But an expert told the Post that it’s not possible for anyone to be charged even $100 for housekeeping, let alone nearly $400.
“Let’s say that you use the best shampoos, the best soaps, the best conditioners, the best coffee,” University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management professor Diego Bufquin explained. “At the end of the day, you may have something approaching $100 if you have the top products in the world in your guest room. I’ve never seen variable costs per room sold at $400.”
And this could be just the tip of the iceberg because the Trump administration is refusing to release documents showing all Secret Service expenditures, behavior that alone makes it clear Trump is hiding a major scandal. The Emoluments Clause makes it clear that presidents are not allowed to profit off the office they hold, but that is exactly what Trump is doing every time he visits one of his properties. And it’s the taxpayers who are forced to pick up the tab.
When all is said and done, Trump and his family should be forced to pay back taxpayers every cent of the money he has fleeced from them to line his own pockets. If Obama had been caught lining his pockets with taxpayer money, conservatives would have demanded his head.
There’s a reason why Trump is trying to keep expenditure records hidden until after the election in November, and it’s because he knows they are so damning they will likely anger voters and sink his re-election campaign. If they weren’t that bad, he would release them, just like he would release his taxes if they also didn’t contain damning information.
And yet, Trump has the gall to insult Americans by claiming to be the most transparent president in history. He’s not. He’s just the most corrupt.
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