Taxpayers are paying for his travel to Florida, but Donald Trump has blacked out the windows and banned reporters from taking pictures of his golf vacation at the “Winter White House.”
AP reporter Jill Colvin tweeted out an image of the blacked out windows where the press pool is being held:
Our view of Trump’s Jupiter golf course from the pool hold. pic.twitter.com/VCtTIJaSLQ
— Jill Colvin (@colvinj) February 11, 2017
Another pic of the blacked out windows:
White House has blacked out windows to keep pool from taking photos of President golfing in Florida
(via @JenniferJJacobs) pic.twitter.com/dsJnbUtYQI— West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport) February 11, 2017
According to a White House pool report provided to PoliticusUSA, “The pool was escorted into the clubhouse after Trump and Abe were out of view and then led downstairs to a filing room, where we’re told we’ll be staying for awhile. The door and windows are covered with black plastic so we can’t see out. Photographers were instructed not to take pictures on the grounds of a ‘private club.’”
The reporters are being held in a basement with the windows blacked out. Anyone who has been a pool reporter knows that they sometimes have to hold in some odd and uncomfortable locations while covering the president, but the blackening out of the windows is a problem because it represents the President Of The United States hiding his activities from the free press that provides information to the American people.
Taxpayers are paying for Trump’s trips to Florida. His club can’t be both a private resort when he wants the windows blacked out, and a “Winter White House” when the American people are picking up the tab for his millions of dollars in travel and security.
If Trump wanted his privacy, he should have never run for president. Presidents don’t get to black out the windows and hide their activities from the American people. The covering of the windows is a physical representation of the lack of transparency of the Trump administration.
Donald Trump is literally keeping people in the dark about what he is up to.
