Many U.S. Secret Service agents have stood guard in Washington’s elite Kalorama neighborhood, home over the years to Cabinet secretaries and former presidents. Those agents have had to worry about death threats, secure perimeters and suspicious strangers. But with the arrival of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, they had a new worry: finding a toilet.
Instructed not to use any of the half-dozen bathrooms inside the couple’s house, the Secret Service detail assigned to President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law spent months searching for a reliable restroom to use on the job, according to neighbors and law enforcement officials. After resorting to a porta-potty, as well as bathrooms at the nearby home of former president Barack Obama and the not-so-nearby residence of Vice President Pence, the agents finally found a toilet to call their own.
The White House asked to borrow a van Gogh. The Guggenheim offered a gold toilet instead.
But it came at a cost to U.S. taxpayers. Since September 2017, the federal government has been spending $3,000 a month — more than $100,000 to […]
If there is one really interesting tidbit in this story, it is that the Obamas were willing to let the detail use a bathroom, no charge, no restriction. While that may not have been a sufficient solution, presumably because this would mean the two Secret Service teams being in a sense commingled and have to coordinate, it goes to show the difference between two first families. I’m sure even Beau Biden would not have foisted such a vanity on the hardworking members of the Service.