In July, Donald Trump’s adult kids and their spouses lost their Secret Service protection, excepting of course Barron Trump, who will continue to receive protection until he turns 16 in March 2022. Trump himself and his wife Melania will be protected for the rest of their lives. All while he continued to charge the agency a whopping $40,000 for a room for his protective detail. This went on from Jan. 20 until at least April 30, the Daily Beast reports.

But not content to just charge the Secret Service with just room-and-board, Trump has apparently decided that the security is somehow lacking at Mar-a-Lago his garish paean to the Gods of Greed. Therefore, in August a $580,600 Secret Service contract was awarded to an Arkansas-based construction contractor. Written within the contract is this rather fanciful  and shouty statement: “THIS IS TO PROVIDE MAR-A-LAGO WITH A PHYSICAL SECURITY BUILD-OUT UPGRADE.”

The contract extends through July 28, 2022, and was awarded without any competition during the bidding process. And if there’s one thing Trump loves to do it’s to make American taxpayers pay through the nose. He did it in 2020 with his overhyped July 4th celebration at Mt. Rushmore which bled taxpayers for nearly $4 million and coupled with other events held in Washington, D.C., the totals actually came to nearly $14,573,608, according to a July 2020 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

And as you might expect, taxpayers will be footing the bill for this Mar-a-Lago hornswoggle. There’s been some embarrassing incidents surrounding the apparently security-deficient resort, including an incident that involved a teenager who managed to sneak past Secret Service agents and into Mar-a-Lago while Trump was there. Then, there’s the watchdog group ProPublica, which found the internet security at several Trump properties was shoddy. Enough so that all, including Mar-a-Lago, could be hacked quite easily.

If you really want to know how bad the internet security is at these properties, I recommend you read ProPublica’s report. It’s pretty shocking.

But why should taxpayers be forced to foot the bill for a man who knowingly colluded with Russia, a man with notoriously loose lips? Is he going to wind up to be a national security problem — even more so than he was as president? One wonders.