Vice President Mike Pence's trip to Ireland has been mired in controversy for his decision to lodge in President Donald Trump's Doonbeg Resort. As if patronizing untold amounts of taxpayer money to your boss's private endeavors while on a publicly funded visit wasn't fishy enough, Doonbeg Resort isn't even near Dublin, where Pence's meetings and appearances are being held.
In fact, Doonbeg Resort is 180 miles away. So why did Pence take Trump's suggestion to stay there, despite its lack of transparency and integrity?
Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, says it has everything to do with family.
Short told reporters that Pence's great grandmother is from Doonbeg, and that he has at least one distant family member in the town.
But people weren't buying that what could have been a day or weekend trip to see his relative and "ancestral hometown" resulted in a 180 mile commute by jet for Pence to conduct business on Ireland's opposite coast.
The day before Pence's team legitimized the Vice President's need to stay in his "ancestral hometown," Donald Trump chastised Obama for his occasional vacations to his actual home state of Hawaii.
Familial relations are the second reason Pence's team has given for staying in Doonbeg instead of Dublin, where his official business is. The first reason they cited was Pence's safety, claiming that because the Secret Service had secured the perimeter for Trump before, it was easier and safer for them to do it again.
That same day, the Secret Service said that Trump properties aren't easier to secure.
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