Finance

New Taxpayer-Funded 'Department Of Catching A Sick Wave, Brah' Based On Absurd Fantasy That Trump Has Ever Been In The Water

Oh, please. Donald Trump is active in watersports like an earthworm is active in hang-gliding.

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

OK, I had a well-researched column about a topic relevant to the sophisticated, mature readers of this website all ready to go for this week, but I’m putting that shit in shrink wrap for another time, because WE ARE GOING TO HAVE PRESIDENTIAL JET SKIS NOW!

That’s right: D.C.’s own NBC News 4 just reported on a Secret Service purchase memo that says the agency needs to buy a pair of sweet-ass jet skis, for, you know, fighting water crimes and stuff, I guess.

In the grand scheme of things, this sure isn’t the end of the world, considering the amount of taxpayer dollars being squandered. The Secret Service specified that it needed 4-stroke, 4-cylinder 1498cc watercraft (if you don’t know, that is a huge-ass engine size for a jet ski) which can each carry up to 900 pounds. NBC reported that there are Kawasaki models starting at around $10,000 apiece meeting those specifications, but you can’t tell me a buyer spending somebody else’s money and looking at an already over-the-top ginormous jet ski is going to go for the basic economy model. Still, even when you factor in the added expenses like a trailer and storage costs at the Secret Service’s training center in Beltsville, Maryland, we’re talking about a tiny drop in the bucket when it comes to waste of taxpayer dollars.

But what really gets me is the purported reason for the purchase. “The First Family is very active in water sports,” said the Secret Service agency memo in justification of the purchase. Bullshit.

Have you seen even one picture of Donald Trump at the beach? In a bathing suit? With wet hair? How is it statistically possible that this man has lived in the public spotlight for 40 years without ever substantially encountering, within range of a camera, the basic chemical substance that is vital for all known forms of life? And this is the guy who can’t seem to help thrusting himself in front of every lens he encounters. We have pictures of Chris Christie enjoying a beach he shut down. We have lots of pictures of Obama being a snack and actually doing water sports. If photos existed of Trump doing anything remotely normal in or near a body of water, we would have them. Donald Trump is active in watersports like an earthworm is active in hang-gliding.

So, you might point out that the memo does indicate that the purchase is for the “First Family,” not just Trump himself. NBC reported that the memo goes on to say, “Several family members along with their guest [sic] participate in open water activities for which USSS Special Agent Rescue Swimmers are responsible.” Think this over a little bit. The jet skis aren’t really to protect the hydrophobic Trump, or the First Lady, or the minor son he forgot he had. They’re for Trump’s rotten adult children and the people they’re bringing to Mar-a-Lago and the Hamptons to peddle influence to, all of whom are supposedly rich themselves and should be able to afford their own jet skis.

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I’m also unconvinced that this purchase isn’t at least partially just an excuse for fun-loving Secret Service agents to tool around on jet skis on the taxpayer dollar. We have somehow managed to make it three years into a Trump presidency without having to purchase presidential jet skis yet, and while the Secret Service memo claims agents have rented watercraft “with their personal funds” in the past, it doesn’t appear to specifically say that they rented jet skis with their personal funds for work use without reimbursement. Maybe Secret Service agents did rent jet skis on their own time, for fun, which is what jet skis are used for, or maybe they paid to rent jet skis for work and got reimbursed, but don’t try to tell me agents who have already successfully charged taxpayers half a million dollars to rent golf carts during this presidency are going out-of-pocket to rent ridiculous types of vehicles for work.

Apparently, in this White House, the hackneyed jet ski chase scene from every awful action movie you’ve ever seen was actually a serious policy proposal. Welcome to 2019, America.

Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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