Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump refused to let their Secret Service detail use any of the bathrooms in their Washington, D.C., home, according to a new Washington Post report — costing taxpayers $100,000-plus and spawning online comparisons to the Oscar-winning 2011 movie “The Help.”
According to the Post, President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law have barred the Secret Service officers protecting them in their upscale Washington, D.C., home from the home’s six and a half bathrooms — forcing the agency to rent a a toilet-equipped basement apartment near the Kushner residence for $3,000 a month (a total of at least $100,000).
White House spokespeople denied the report, which unnamed law enforcement officials saying that the detail made other arrangement to respect the Kushners’ request not to enter the residence. When Ivanka Trump and Kushner first moved to Washington, the report said, Secret Service were forced to use portable toilets as well as bathrooms at the homes of former President Barack Obama and Vice President Mike Pence. “The Kushners have a tremendous amount of respect for the servicemen and women on their detail and for the United States Secret Service as a whole,” a spokesperson told The Post.
But the Twitterverse quickly seized on the report, noting similarities to the 2011 movie “The Help,” in which some suburban white Southerners refused to let their Black domestic servants use the toilets in their homes.
“Wow, this is the plot of the Help but all white people,” another user noted. “Imagine thinking someone who would take a bullet from you can’t use your toilet.”
“U.S. taxpayers have spent $100,000 to rent a bathroom for Secret Service agents because the president’s daughter is Hilly Holbrook from The Help,” said Mississippi journalist Ashton Pittman, referring to a white character played by Bryce Dallas Howard who is a staunch supporter of racial segregation in the South, including shared bathroom use.
Others made the Hilly Holbrook comparison in more NSFW terms — noting that Holbrook’s longtime maid, played by Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, serves her employer a pie made from her own excrement.
Numerous Twitter users suggested the story of the Kushners’ Secret Service detail reminded them of that scene.