Look, when you’re a big flashy celebrity real estate mogul—and also, more trivially, the president of the United State—you have to make sure your buildings only cater to a certain class of people. Movie stars. Billionaires. Kings. And definitely not a bunch of suit-wearing treasury agents, whose only claim to fame is that they’ve promised to step between your family and a bullet if someone tries to kill them.
The Washington Post reports this week that the Secret Service has been asked to vacate Trump Tower, due to a lease issue with the building’s management. The Service established a command base in one of the tower’s suites during the early part of Trump’s time in office, but was asked last month to vacate, moving to a trailer on the sidewalk 50 stories below Trump’s private suite. Reasons for the move include the price of the rental, which was set by the Trump Organization (producing the amazing sentence in the Post write-up, “Trump’s government sought to be a customer of Trump’s business.”)
Admittedly, Trump hasn’t been back to the tower since inauguration, and while his wife and youngest child lived there until June, they’ve since moved to the White House. Still, it’s standard Secret Service practice to protect the current president’s primary non-governmental residence, and security experts have expressed concern at the distance between the command center and the areas agents are obligated to protect, pointing out that distance and walls could disrupt vital radio traffic.
The Trump Organization confirmed the ouster on Thursday, with a spokesperson saying, “After much consideration, it was mutually determined that it would be more cost effective and logistically practical for the Secret Service to lease space elsewhere.”