美国国家公共电台 NPR These Days, Business Travel By Trump's Sons Is Costly And Complicated

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The president's two adult sons, Eric and Donald Trump 1 Jr., have been traveling the world since their dad's election. They work for the Trump Organization. They run it now, in fact. Their business travel comes at a cost to U.S. taxpayers 2, as NPR's Jackie Northam reports.

JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE 3: In the first week of January, Eric Trump took a trip to Uruguay to check progress on an unfinished Trump Tower. About a month later, he was in the Dominican Republic seeing whether an earlier resort project could be revived. He joined his brother Donald Jr. a couple weeks later at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a Trump-branded golf course in Dubai. And the two popped up last week in Canada for the opening of a new Trump hotel.

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DONALD TRUMP JR: Vancouver's truly one of the great cities of the world, and it was so fitting for the Trump brand.

NORTHAM: Since Donald Trump became president, his sons' travel has become much more complicated and expensive, especially overseas. Brendan Doherty is a Naval 4 Academy professor who tracks presidential travel. He says the president's sons are guaranteed round the clock Secret Service protection, and overseas trips usually involve coordination 5 with local security forces and often U.S. embassies.

BRENDAN DOHERTY: When you have a presidential family, like the Trump family, that is so involved in international business, the logistical issues and the costs and the security risks are all more substantial than we're used to seeing.

NORTHAM: Doherty says it's very difficult to get hard figures for the costs for hotels, travel, overtime 6 especially for the Secret Service. A spokesman for the Secret Service said it doesn't talk about its protection operations. Jonathan Wackrow spent 14 years in the Secret Service, including providing protection for President Obama's family. He says it's important to protect the president's children, whatever the cost.

JONATHAN WACKROW: If Eric Trump is traveling and let's say, God forbid, gets attacked and hurt, killed, imagine the impact, the psychological impact, that that would have on the president himself. So by protecting the children, you're, by default, protecting the sanctity of the office of the presidency 7.

NORTHAM: Robert Gordon, a law professor at Stanford University who specializes in legal history and ethics 8, doesn't dispute the need for Secret Service protection for the president's family. But he says they should start paying for it themselves if they're using it while on private business.

ROBERT GORDON: Given that this is supplied to them free by the government, shouldn't they exercise a little common sense and restraint in how far they use this perk 9?

NORTHAM: Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial 10 Watch, says this is just part of the cost built into this presidency.

TOM FITTON: People hired this president in part based on his business success, and there are extra costs associated with that business success as a result.

NORTHAM: Fitton says it wouldn't be right to suggest Trump's sons should stop conducting business despite the high cost.

Jackie Northam, NPR News, Washington.