Secret Service Goes Broke, Spends $60,000 On Golf Cart Rentals To Protect Trump

Anyone remember all of those times Donald Trump criticized Barack Obama for golfing too much?

No?

That’s ok, here are 30 examples of Trump maligning Obama for golfing and vacationing:

Make sure and note that third-to-last tweet: “While Putin is scheming and beaming on how to take over the world, President Obama is watching March Madness (basketball)!”

Write your own jokes.

And when you’re done laughing at the jokes you wrote, and when you’ve finally stopped chuckling at how generally absurd all of those tweets most assuredly are, get ready to laugh some more, because USA Today has one helluva punchline for you.

To wit:

The Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission — in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump’s family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast.

Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles, in an interview with USA TODAY, said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year. 

The agency has faced a crushing workload since the height of the contentious election season, and it has not relented in the first seven months of the administration. Agents must protect Trump — who has traveled almost every weekend to his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia — and his adult children whose business trips and vacations have taken them across the country and overseas.

Overwork and constant travel have also been driving a recent exodus from the Secret Service ranks, yet without congressional intervention to provide additional funding, Alles will not even be able to pay agents for the work they have already done.

The compensation crunch is so serious that the director has begun discussions with key lawmakers to raise the combined salary and overtime cap for agents, from $160,000 per year to $187,000 for at least the duration of Trump’s first term.

But even if such a proposal was approved, about 130 veteran agents would not be fully compensated for hundreds of hours already amassed, according to the agency.

“I don’t see this changing in the near term,” Alles said.

That’s right, folks: Trump has gone on so many vacations (“working” vacations he can assure you), that he has quite literally bankrupted the Secret Service.

Believe it or not, it gets better.

According to the same story, the Secret Service has spent more on golf cart rentals than the average American family makes in a year:

Always costly in manpower and equipment, the president’s jaunts to Mar-a-Lago are estimated to cost at least $3 million each, based on a General Accounting Office estimate for similar travel by former President Obama.

The Secret Service has spent some $60,000 on golf cart rentals alone this year to protect Trump at both Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster. 

So here’s a President who is supposed to be the champion of everyday, working Americans, and he is golfing so goddamn much that the Secret Service has spent more driving around in golf carts to cover his ass while he’s chipping from the rough than the median annual household income.

And because we couldn’t possibly put it any better, we’ll give the last work to the above-mentioned “Tex”:

I don’t see this changing in the near term.