argggh... Slate - "American Tax Dollars Are Already Helping Trump Make Money"
By Josh Voorhees
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/02/06/american_tax_dollars_are_already_helping_trump_make_money.html
Early last month, two weeks before he’d watch his father be sworn in as president, Eric Trump traveled to a seaside town in Uruguay to help sell condos that bear his family’s name. The younger of President Trump’s two adult sons was accompanied by a Secret Service detail and joined on site by State Department staff, which together gave the business trip the unmistakable gloss of a diplomatic one. It also cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $100,000 in hotels alone.
That last detail—reported by the Washington Post on Friday—makes crystal clear that the federal government will be forced to spend money every time one of Trump’s adult sons heads out the door on business for a company owned by the president. President Trump’s conflicts, then, are more than just a massive ethical problem; they’re now a massive ethical problem that the American taxpayers are paying to help maintain.
According to records reviewed by the Post, the government’s hotel bill for the trip totaled $97,830—$88,320 for the Secret Service and another $9,510 for the embassy staff the State Department says provided unspecified “support” during the visit. It stands to reason that the security detail also incurred additional costs, though details remain scarce. The Secret Service, the State Department, the White House, and the Trump Organization all declined to provide key information about the trip to the Post, including basic details like how long Eric Trump was actually in the country. (Local press reports suggest his stay may have been as short as two nights.) This was not a one-off trip, either. Eric and his brother, Don Jr., are set to travel to Canada later this month for the grand opening of the new Trump International Hotel & Tower in Vancouver, British Columbia. Secret Service will almost certainly follow.
In some ways, this story is not unique. Members of the first family have long received Secret Service protection, which means taxpayers by necessity pay when one of them travels abroad. (The government pays for those doing the protecting but not the person being protected. The Trump Organization or its business partners, then, most likely covered Eric’s travel costs.) What makes this different, though, is that the purpose of Eric’s trip wasn’t simply for his own sake—but explicitly for the president’s as well. The trip, after all, was taken both literally and figuratively in his father’s name. The most infuriating part, then, is not what American taxpayers are losing, but what Trump is gaining.
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