Donald Trump Jr and girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle's Paris love trip cost taxpayers at least $64k, says report
In 2018, President Donald Trump's eldest son Donald Trump Jr and his girlfriend who is also a fundraiser for POTUS' reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee Kimberly Guilfoyle, took a two-day trip to Paris. There, the couple stayed at a $1,000-a night hotel near the Champs-Elysees and, since they had recently begun a relationship, they made visits to the Louvre and Eiffel Tower. The excited couple even took to their social media pages to share photos throughout the trip. They then extended their trip by attending a friend's 50th birthday party in Monaco.
Now, this was no affordable holiday. According to US Secret Service records that were recently obtained by Huffington Post, this trip cost taxpayers at least $64,443.
According to HuffPost, Secret Service documents show that taxpayers spent $31,104 on air travel and $23,036 for hotel rooms on July 11-12, 2018. This was split between the Hotel de Sers and the Prince de Galles. But there is more coming. The hotels were so expensive that the agency had to ask an $8,575 "lodging variance" to make up for the overrun — the original estimate was $14,460. In addition to this, $10,303 was spent to rent three cars from an agency that offers armored vehicles.
As of now, it is unclear how many agents accompanied the couple during their trip (since the agency doesn't divulge information about that). At the same time, the costs they incurred in Monaco are not known since the official records only showed the France expenses.
While neither Trump Jr nor Guilfoyle are government employees, it is standard for family members of the president to receive Secret Service protection. Trump Jr is considered a potential 2024 GOP candidate. A spokesperson told HuffPost that Trump Jr would prefer not to be under Secret Service protection, but he has no choice given the "astonishingly high number of death threats" he receives, adding that the heightened security is because of "unhinged conspiracies" about him being published by "left-wing outlets".
"He gets an astonishingly high number of death threats and though he would much prefer not to be, for his personal safety, he has no choice but to be under Secret Service protection," Andrew Surabian said.
This is not the first time that Trump Jr's taxpayer-funded travel expenses have come under scrutiny. In 2019, he took an eight-day hunting trip to Mongolia to kill a rare breed of sheep. According to reports, this trip cost in excess of $75,000 for Secret Service protection. However, there were attempts to hide this too — according to documents initially obtained by a government watchdog group CREW, the trip cost $17,000 on paper, which is a quarter of what it actually cost taxpayers.
The couple continues to carry forward the nepotism and privilege issue in their own way. The odds of Guilfoyle having gotten the job that she has today if she hadn't been dating Trump Jr were "less than zero, if that's possible," one White House informal adviser said on condition of anonymity in the same HuffPost story.