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Friday, October 21, 2022

ALDOUS J. PENNYFARTHING: Eric Trump claimed his dad charged Secret Service $50 for hotel rooms. The real figure was $1,185

In the wake of new reports that the Trump crime family (aka the Chicken All-Fredos) profited handsomely from the Secret Service’s visits to Trump-controlled properties during Donny’s “presidency,” MSNBC unearthed a telling clip of Eric Trump—who keeps showing up at Mar-a-Lago no matter how often his dad sends him to live with Chuck Grassley’s barn cats—brazenly lying about the fees Trump hotels charged the government.

While it’s an article of faith among MAGA types that Trump risked his imaginary billions in order to humbly serve as our president (Trump himself once risibly claimed that he’d lost between $2 billion and $5 billion while doing whatever that was in the White House), Trump appears to have been less than shy about using his position to reap unearned benefits.

For instance, there was that time he attempted to force G-7 leaders to gather at his national bedbug sanctuary in Miami. Or that bit about Air Force crews weirdly deciding to refuel mere miles outside of his Turnberry resort in Scotland. Or the fact that he didn’t actually put his assets in a blind trust like every other president since Watergate, leaving our nation vulnerable to countless potential (and no doubt actual) conflicts of interest.

But the Trumps don’t want to give away the game all at once, and so you get clips like this one, which MSNBC unearthed following the latest reports of Trump’s money-grubbing at taxpayer expense. Watch:

ERIC TRUMP: “If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free—meaning, like, cost for housekeeping, effectively. They do actually have to legally charge the government something. 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 bucks a night, whereas, you know, we charge them, like, 50 bucks.”

Wait, is it possible Eric is even worse at basic arithmetic than these jabronis?

Okay, I know the Trumps aren’t terribly bright, but you have to try really, really hard to get an answer this wrong.

Here’s what Trump’s hotels were actually charging the government, according to NBC News:

During Donald Trump’s presidency, Trump hotels charged the Secret Service as much as $1,185 per night, more than five times the recommended government rate, and the high rates continued after he left office, according to an investigation released Monday by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Beginning in January 2017 through Sept. 15, 2021, the Secret Service received at least 40 waivers to let it spend more than the recommended per diem rates to stay at Trump properties to protect Trump as a president and former president, and also to protect those around him, the investigation found.

Wait, maybe Eric was naively charging 50 bucks while the rest of his family was gouging the ever-living fuck out of us. Nah. Turns out he’s just a liar.

In one ledger obtained by the Oversight Committee and published in the report, the Secret Service was charged $1,160 for a room at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. for agents protecting Eric Trump on March 8, 2017. The government rate for D.C. on that night was $242. On Nov. 8, 2017, another ledger shows that the Secret Service was charged $1,185 to lodge agents protecting Donald Trump Jr. The government rate was $201.

The Trumps are shameless grifters. Full stop. If Trump ever makes his way back to Washington, D.C., expect Vladimir Putin’s next yacht to be full of ugly buff marks where he scraped the “USS Nimitz” off. Because Donald Trump simply can’t help himself. If there’s something worth stealing, you better believe he’ll steal it. Even—nay, especially—if it’s classified.

And yet, Republicans build monuments to this traitorous scoundrel.

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