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Tue, August 22, 2017
Phoenix, AZ
07:00 pm (MST)

Secret Service depletes funds to pay agents because of Trump's frequent travel, large family
The Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission – in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump's family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast.

Secret Service Director Randolph "Tex" Alles, in an interview with USA TODAY, said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year.

Trump's frequent visits to his "winter White House" and "summer White House" are especially challenging for the agency, which must maintain a regular security infrastructure at each – while still allowing access to paying members and guests.

Always costly in manpower and equipment, the president's jaunts to Mar-a-Lago are estimated to cost at least $3 million each, based on a General Accounting Office estimate for similar travel by former President Obama. The Secret Service has spent some $60,000 on golf cart rentals alone this year to protect Trump at both Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster.

Trump Family’s Endless Conflicts of Interest: Chapter and Verse

Emails: Breitbart editor pledges to do 'dirty work' for Bannon, smears Ivanka
A self-described "email prankster" seemingly fooled top editors at Breitbart over the weekend into believing he was Steve Bannon, the fired White House chief strategist who returned to the right-wing website as executive chairman on Friday. In the emails, Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow pledged that he and several other top editors would do Bannon's "dirty work" against White House aides. The emails were shared with CNN by the prankster.

In other emails, Marlow suggested he could have Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump ousted from the White House "by end of year" and shared a personal smear about their private lives, perhaps an indication of how low the website is willing to go to achieve its agenda.

After the Breitbart editors realized they had been hoodwinked, Breitbart president and CEO Larry Solov wrote a cautionary note to staffers. "For the moment, be especially careful of emails from this address," Solov wrote in the company's internal Slack channel, a copy of which was obtained by CNN.
Solov added: "They are fake."

The relationship between President Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has disintegrated to the point that they have not spoken to each other in weeks, and Mr. McConnell has privately expressed uncertainty that Mr. Trump will be able to salvage his administration after a series of summer crises.

Still, some allies of Mr. Trump on the right — including Stephen K. Bannon, who stepped down last week as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist — welcome more direct conflict with Mr. McConnell and congressional Republicans.

Roger J. Stone Jr., a Republican strategist who has advised Mr. Trump for decades, said the president needed to “take a scalp” in order to force cooperation from Republican elites who have resisted his agenda. Mr. Stone urged Mr. Trump to make an example of one or more Republicans, like Mr. Flake, who have refused to give full support to his administration.

“The president should start bumping off incumbent Republican members of Congress in primaries,” Mr. Stone said. “If he did that, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would wet their pants and the rest of the Republicans would get in line.”