Trump ‘couldn’t run that damn McFlurry machine if it cost him anything!’ Walz quipped
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Tuesday hit out at Donald Trump’s anti-union record as he promised that he and Vice President Kamala Harris would take the pro-labor agenda that made his state one of the best places to work and bring it to the rest of the country.
Speaking to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union in Los Angeles, the Democratic vice presidential nominee — the first labor union member on a presidential ticket since Ronald Reagan ran as a Republican in the 1980 election — slammed Trump’s record while touting Harris’s background as a former fast food worker.
“You know Vice President Harris grew up in a middle class family, picked up shifts at that McDonald’s as a student. I keep asking this to make a contrast here, can you simply picture Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s, trying to make a McFlurry or something?” he said.
Okay, I see where you’re coming from.
The issue here is one of context. Yes, golf is traditionally a leisure activity of US Presidents. There are a few military bases near Washington DC that have golf courses on them, which is where Presidents usually go. Because they’re on secured installations, the additional security required (read: the cost, in taxpayer dollars) for a Presidential visit is minimal.
Donald Trump didn’t do that. He would either fly to his golf course in New Jersey, or his course in Florida. Because neither of those locations were secure, it cost the Secret Service a lot more time and effort (read: taxpayers’ dollars) to secure the area for a Presidential visit. Also Donald Trump forced the Secret Service agents to rent rooms and golf carts- in other words, the agency tasked with protecting the President of the US had to pay for rooms and carts for its agents, and since Trump didn’t divest himself from his businesses that money went straight from the USSS to his pockets. He essentially was at one of his properties every weekend for his entire Presidency- over 360+ days were on a Trump property, which means that a full 25% of his term in office was spent on a golf course.
So not only was he absentee from the White House for a significant period of time, he was doing so in a way that forced taxpayers to give him money above and beyond his salary. Profiting off the Presidency is supposed to be illegal, but since we have a judicial system that has proven it’s willing to bend over backwards in its refusal to hold him accountable, nothing was done about it.
In contrast, Obama usually went golfing near the WH and did so at a lower average rate than Trump. Fox only complained about him because, well, they’re racists.
Not to mention putting local cities on the hook for his safety