The Secret Service Wants $8 Million to Build a Fake White House So They Can Protect the White House

This week, while testifying before a House panel about the Secret Service budget, the director of the Secret Service Joseph Clancy asked Congress to give his agency $8 MILLION DOLLARS to build a replica of the White House so the agents can have a “more realistic training experience.”

Via CBS:

Currently, Clancy told lawmakers their training is hampered by the lack of a good reproduction of the White House. He says training is now done in a parking lot but the parking lot doesn’t have the bushes and fountains as the White House grounds do.

So because the place they train ar doesn’t have bushes and fountains, they can’t properly protect the White House? They have to have an $8 million replica of the White House in order to protect the White House?

Does this logic make sense to you?

Sure, it’s the White House, but come on. What if we applied this logic to the rest of society? How does anyone protect anything without building expensive full-scale replicas?

The comments on CBS would be hilarious if this wasn’t so sad. Someone even asked if we build a fake white house can we put the fake president in it.

It’s because no one can take these people seriously at this point. They are the Secret Service and yet they can’t seem to stop people from repeatedly finding their way into the White House and it’s just one building. Mall cops have protected malls better than this, without a full-size multi-million-dollar replicas of the mall they work at in order to do it.

Then again, this is the same director who recently apologized in a closed meeting to Congress because the Secret Service apparently deleted a video of two of its agents crashing into the White House gate after leaving the bar because of some arbitrary 72-hour policy:

Sen. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, confirmed seeing two videos in a closed door meeting, announcing missing footage related to the incident.

Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 17, 2015, before the House Appropriations Homeland Security Budget hearing.

“We inquired if there were additional tapes and angles and the director informed us that there may not be because it’s their policy to erase them 72 hours after they record, which is just unfathomable,” Chaffetz told CNN. “I can’t think of any good reason to do that.”

“This is not your local 7-11. This is the White House,” he said.

Chaffetz expressed concern about the missing tapes, questioning how some tapes survived the incident while others were didn’t.

“I don’t know if we’re getting the runaround,” he said. “It doesn’t smell right.”

But hey, let’s give them $8 million to build a fake White House. Let’s make it $9 million, that way there’s a million extra for some common sense.