Since taking office, Donald Trump has made a remarkable 117 visits to play golf at his own golf courses. One of the reasons he’s done this is because he’s a pretty lazy person, solely interested in his own gratification. The other reason, which dovetails with the primary reason, is that Trump’s businesses have been able to bill the American taxpayer tons of money. And so while Trump promotes the donation of his $400,000 salary, giving rubes wearing oversized MAGA hats have something to hold on to, he makes sure he’s fleecing them on the back end.
The Washington Post reports that the United States Secret Service rented a room for 137 consecutive days in 2017 at Trump International Hotel in Washington in order to provide security for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin himself reportedly paid for his own hotel suite while he lived there during that time. According to the Post, that single room cost $33,000 to U.S. taxpayers because “Trump hotel charged the maximum rate that federal agencies were generally allowed to pay in 2017.” MAGA!
When the Post asked Mnuchin about the costs to the taxpayer for his stay at Trump International, a spokesperson told them that “The Secretary was not aware of what the U.S. Secret Service paid for the adjoining room.” Must have been strange to have very serious guys, with very serious weapons, talking into their earpieces and wrists while he went to and from appointments in D.C.? Did the treasury secretary think that these Secret Service agents were paying for their own rooms?
The amount of money being directly billed to Trump businesses is still murky. Reports find hundreds of thousands spent here and hundreds of thousands there. But estimates of the total costs to the American people, for Trump to mostly vacation and swim in the swamp he is king of, float around $133,000,000.
