Pence Commuting to Meetings by Plane So He Can Stay at a Trump Property in Ireland
This kind of thing happens all the time, but the fact that it’s routine does not make it less appalling, but more so:
President Donald Trump suggested that Vice President Mike Pence stay at his Irish golf club on an official trip funded by taxpayer dollars, Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short told reporters Tuesday.
Pence, who is traveling with his wife, sister, and mother, is staying at the president’s Doonbeg, Ireland golf club during his trip to the country. Rather than stay in Dublin, where he is set for a day of meetings and events with Irish officials, Pence is making the back-and-forth trip from Doonbeg to Dublin, a more than one hour flight each way.
Originally, Pence was scheduled to conclude his trip in Doonbeg, where the vice president has familial ties, rather than is flying back-and-forth between the two locales before making other European visits.
On whether the president asked Pence to stay at his Irish golf club, Short said: “I don’t think it was a request, like a command … I think that it was a suggestion.”
“It’s like when we went through the trip, it’s like, well, he’s going to Doonbeg because that’s where the Pence family is from,” Short said before describing the president’s suggestion. “It’s like, ‘Well, you should stay at my place.'”
I saw a lot of people upset (in my view justifiably) at Ilhan Omar for scheduling a taxpayer-funded trip to Israel in part to visit family. Visiting family is not a reason to stay a three-hour drive from where your meetings are located. Funneling government money to a property owned by the President, when he has not divested from his business holdings, is not a reason to stay a three-hour drive from where your meetings are located.
This is a very bad look. But again, it’s nothing unusual. This sort of graft is commonplace for this cretin, and everyone who works for him gets corrupted as well.
This sort of graft is commonplace for Babylon-on-Potomac. If you’re not seeing it, you’re not paying attention.
Gryph (08c844) — 9/3/2019 @ 7:21 amIf he’s making it available at a lower price, or there’s better security, there might be a reason. I mean, Trump is not coming over. He cancelled a trip to Poland for the 80th anniversay oof the stat of World War II. He sent Pence instead.
Otherwise, I would attribute this to pride, rather than an attempt to make some trivial sum oof money.
Sammy Finkelman (e24bc2) — 9/3/2019 @ 7:30 amI’m sure pride is mixed in there too, Sammy, and more importantly the ever-critical need to promote the “brand.” Otherwise the lame attempts to justify this are lame.
Patterico (115b1f) — 9/3/2019 @ 7:38 amTrump is no better than he should be, but Pence still retains the ability to disappoint me. Pity, and him looking so much like a man too.
nk (dbc370) — 9/3/2019 @ 7:58 am4. Lay down with dogs, wake up with…?
Gryph (08c844) — 9/3/2019 @ 8:04 am“Drain the swamp!”
Radegunda (e6c209) — 9/3/2019 @ 8:22 amHonestly, this is much ado about very little. How much is the Government being charged for staying at a Trump golf course vs. an expensive Hotel Room in Dublin? Is Pence being charged anything? How much less security does Pence need at an out of the way Golf course vs. Dublin? How much does it cost to fly two hours (RT)? Trump certainly doesn’t need the $$$.
IRC, the budget of the USA is $2,000,0000 million. But we’re supposed to care that Pence spends $50,000 flying to Dublin and back?
rcocean (1a839e) — 9/3/2019 @ 8:56 amNobody ever said that Trump was more than a small-time grifter.
nk (dbc370) — 9/3/2019 @ 9:20 amActually, it’s worse because her trip was funded by Miftah, a group of vicious anti-Semites and terrorist sympathizers. And it was Tlaib visiting family in I-P, not Omar.
Paul Montagu (a2342d) — 9/3/2019 @ 9:21 amAs for Pence, he does what the president does, even if it doesn’t really make sense.
Good point, Trump and the current batch of GOP leaders really are bad at fiscal discipline. I’m glad you highlighted that they completely don’t care about that issue any more.
Time123 (b4d075) — 9/3/2019 @ 10:28 amYeah, if you really care about that issue, maybe you should vote D in 2020. They’re big on fiscal discipline and “Free Everything”. Or maybe you can vote libertarian – or stay home.
rcocean (1a839e) — 9/3/2019 @ 10:59 amthis is the same outlet, that covers biden with a pillow,
narciso (147951) — 9/3/2019 @ 11:05 amGood point, I had almost forgotten “what about democrats” for a minute there I was about to hold Trump accountable for his actual results, and not just doing better than some other hypothetical democrat.
Time123 (80b471) — 9/3/2019 @ 11:18 amHe’s right, though probably not in the way he intended. If you want republicans to care about fiscal responsibility, put democrats into power.
Davethulhu (94520c) — 9/3/2019 @ 11:35 amYeah… out of the pan, into the fire…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 9/3/2019 @ 11:39 amGiven that Trump cancelled his ‘Polish travel plans’ [there’s a joke in there some place] “at the last minute” with a storm excuse, and plugged Pence into it instead, likely the VEEP is ‘running the route’ already secured and cleared by officials POTUS would have followed. The optics may look lousy but the logistics could simply have won out given the time frame.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 9/3/2019 @ 11:39 amAnd this is the reason that I’m not a billionaire. If I had a billion, I would not care about $50,000. I’d be broke soon. Throwing away the 50K is something that I could only afford to do 20,000 times. Not counting interim passive interest income.
Fred (b3c142) — 9/3/2019 @ 11:41 amif you look at the actual results, our best fiscal discipline is a Dem president with a republican congress.
Time123 (80b471) — 9/3/2019 @ 11:45 amDear Mr. Vice President:
PLUSES for staying at the Gold Club
Safety, not being accosted by crazy leftists as you walk about, no on messing with your food. No crazy anti-Trump demonstrators. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-48553605/donald-trump-dublin-protest-march-against-irish-visit
MINUSES
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 9/3/2019 @ 3:08 pmOptics to the Never Trump crowd, who don’t like you as it is.
I once had a case pending in New York, where the defendant (located in LA) was using an LA lawyer, with whom I got along quite well. As it happens, he had a daughter going to school in Columbia, and he often tried to get a trip on the client’s dime to NY for something in the case. He always asked me to schedule depositions for Fridays, so he could then see his daughter on the weekend.
So yeah, lots of people do it. Doesn’t make it right, but in the scheme of things it is not our worst problem.
Bored Lawyer (998177) — 9/3/2019 @ 3:35 pmfair weather tory
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1173545/brexit-news-phillip-lee-tory-lib-dems-deflection-house-of-commons-LGBT-members-quit
narciso (147951) — 9/3/2019 @ 3:41 pm20: Once but only once, I had a key witness on Oahu, who would not come to the mainland. I forced myself to fly to Honolulu for the benefit of the client, but paid for my family to come.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 9/3/2019 @ 5:08 pmThe President should not be steering government money to his businesses. It’s banana republic behavior, and if it’s not a crime (defalcation, bribery, extortion) it should be. No wonder he and Bolsonaro bonded the way they did.
nk (dbc370) — 9/3/2019 @ 5:17 pmMoreover, it could hurt his relationship with his hotel/casino/resort-owning mega-donors who expected to get this business for themselves.
nk (dbc370) — 9/3/2019 @ 5:31 pm23. Almost the first time its ever happened, if you ignore things like the 500m that went to Solyndra. And we know how many US attorneys investigated that for defalcation, bribery and extortion.
And here the Govt gets value for the $ spent (none in Solyndra), and the VP isn’t at a city hotel with demonstrators massing outside.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 9/3/2019 @ 6:10 pmBolsonaro who lost a quarter of his lung, because some crazy socialist shanked him, yes why would he have reservations withe left.
Narciso (52211c) — 9/3/2019 @ 6:19 pm“The President should not be steering government money to his businesses. It’s banana republic behavior, and if it’s not a crime (defalcation, bribery, extortion) it should be. No wonder he and Bolsonaro bonded the way they did.”
Figure they bond more from their above Dave Chappelle-level trolling and posting skills.
But seriously, unless they’re getting rich AFTER rather than BEFORE leaving office, being sticklers for all five hundred pages of government expense reporting regulations seems to me to be reflexively steering them to the least trustworthy and secure providers by default. And having people you can trust rather than people with a greater than 50% chance of having been selected by Freemasons, Communists, or Mormons seems to be just good policy in this ever-more-conspiratorial world.
Bad Paul (f88a6c) — 9/3/2019 @ 7:32 pmYes, Lord knows those tricky Mormons will get you every time…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 9/3/2019 @ 7:36 pmI think DCSCA @16 has it right. This trip was originally scheduled for Trump. As for why Trump wanted to stay on his property, besides being somewhat familiar with the place, there could be a security and security cost argument.
Trump canclled his vist, not to supervise anything, or even to give that impression, but so he coud pay a visit to a disaster area, if it happened in the Unoted States. So far, no hurricane disaster within the boundaries of the United States.
Sammy Finkelman (8dcc71) — 9/3/2019 @ 7:54 pmYes, Lord knows those tricky Mormons will get you every time…
Sure, but can they control the weather like the Rothschilds?
nk (dbc370) — 9/3/2019 @ 8:10 pmThey can not only control the weather, they can control the seagulls…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 9/3/2019 @ 8:40 pmA clever people.
nk (dbc370) — 9/3/2019 @ 8:58 pmYou mean other than because it’s the frickin’ law? It’s inconvenient sometimes following those pesky laws, so let’s just ignore them. Plus, you know, Obama, or something.
Wait, yeah, that sounds like where we are in 2019.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (6e7a1c) — 9/3/2019 @ 9:09 pmOtoh:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/09/iranian-foreign-minister-received-warm-welcome-in-europe.php
Narciso (52211c) — 9/4/2019 @ 6:38 amThe argument of the pro-Trump on most of these corruption threads is an elaborate who cares shrug, which will be abandoned with the next Democrat down the line. I wish I were younger so all this wouldn’t be so predictable.
It’s hard to get exercised about the latest demonstraton of Trump’s unfitness of office, because they have a way of looking like the last unfitness. Since nobody is going to do anything about any of it until next November or so. Well, I get the shrug. Might as well pay attention to something fun and rewarding, like the Braves.
Appalled (d07ae6) — 9/4/2019 @ 6:39 am“Might as well pay attention to something fun and rewarding, like the Braves.”
Or you could ponder Stacey “Tank” Abrams latest moves…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 9/4/2019 @ 7:11 amThat misses the point very badly.
Patterico (115b1f) — 9/4/2019 @ 8:24 amMy employer provides free bus fare to work. One time, I left early so I could get coffee before work. So basically lots of people do what Pence did by motorcading to a jet needlessly and repeatedly as part of a pattern of promoting the president’s hotel chain.
Dustin (6d7686) — 9/4/2019 @ 8:38 am