Back in August, a few stories came out indicating that the Trump administration was running the Secret Service so hard with the constant vacations and possibly illegal overseas business deals that the organization had essentially burned through all of its cash. Thankfully, Donald Trump Jr. has found a way to ease the Secret Service’s money woes a bit with a new plan that’s both fiscally responsible and a little stupid. According to The New York Times, he has decided to completely give up his Secret Service protection detail, meaning the organization will no longer be required to provide protection for him.
Apparently, Trump Jr. wanted to ditch his babysitters because he had “privacy concerns,” which is basically the shadiest excuse anyone could possibly give for not wanting to be followed around by government agents. The New York Times believes that he wanted privacy so he could go camping and hunting without having to worry about the Secret Service, but it’s hard not to interpret this as him not wanting people looking over his shoulder or keeping an official record of which high-ranking members of the Russian government he may be meeting with.
Naturally, the Secret Service hasn’t commented on any of this, choosing only to release a statement pointing out that it doesn’t make any tactical sense to say who and who isn’t receiving protection, but the rest of the Trump family is presumably keeping their guards around—at least until they catch on to this clever scam/money-saving idea. Also, it’s unclear if Jr. is replacing his Secret Service detail with some Trump-backed goons he knows he can trust, but we’ll definitely know that’s the case if he’s surrounded by solid gold Stormtroopers at his next public event.