There’s an old song “Nice Work If You Can Get It.” It should be retitled “Nice Gig If You Can Get It.” It turns out that former President Donald Trump charged the Secret service almost $10,200 in May for agents rooms at one of his golf resorts.
Not a bad arrangement for Trump: the Secret Service has to protect him until the day he has left the earth (and not Jeff Bezos style).
Until that day, if he stays at his properties the Secret Service has to pay him to protect his life.
It’s like your dentist having to pay you for giving you a root canal. (Not a bad idea.)
Former president Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., charged the Secret Service nearly $10,200 for guest rooms used by his protective detail during Trump’s first month at the club this summer, newly released spending records show.
The records — released by the Secret Service in response to a public-records request — show that the ex-president has continued a habit he began in the first days of his presidency: charging rent to the agency that protects his life.
Really, why shouldn’t I charge my proctologist to work on me? After all, when he works on me I’m not just another pretty face.
Since Trump left office in January, U.S. taxpayers have paid Trump’s businesses more than $50,000 for rooms used by Secret Service agents, records show.
The Washington Post reported previously that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club — where he lived from January, when he left the White House, to early May — charged the Secret Service more than $40,000 so that agents could use a room near Trump.
These newly released records provide the first proof that, when Trump moved north to Bedminster, the invoices kept coming.
The Secret Service released a bill it paid to Trump Bedminster in May, totaling $10,199.52. The agency redacted the nightly rate, but the dollar amount itself offered a clue: The bill was an exact multiple of what Trump Bedminster charged the Secret Service while Trump was still in office: $566.64 per night for a four-bedroom “cottage” on the property.
At that rate, the bill from May 2021 would have paid for 18 nights in the cottage. Trump arrived in Bedminster on
May 9.
And…of course:
Neither Trump’s family business — the Trump Organization — nor Trump’s political operation responded to a request for comment.
In my incarnation as a fulltime journalist (freelancing in India, Spain and Bangladesh and working on two American newspapers) when the subject of a news story refuses to comment it means they hope the story will go away. Quite the contrary.
And there is this:
In recent history, The Post could find only one other protected person who had charged the Secret Service rent: Joe Biden. As vice president, Biden charged the Secret Service $2,200 per month to use a cottage on his property in Delaware. In total, Biden received $171,600 between 2011 and 2017.
Biden has not charged the Secret Service rent since becoming president in January, a White House spokesman said.
So the White House responded, unlike Trump.
Wait a minute:
Don’t you get any bright ideas about asking us to pay you for reading this article about the report.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.