President Trump said on Monday evening that he was ending Secret Service protection for former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter and daughter Ashley.
Not only did Mr. Trump declare in a social media post that Hunter Biden — who has been a Trump target for years — would lose his protection “effective immediately,” he mentioned his whereabouts: “He is currently vacationing in, of all places, South Africa, where the Human Rights of people has been strenuously questioned.”
The post merged two of Mr. Trump’s recent fixations: He has talked constantly about his predecessor and the Biden family since returning to office. And he has talked a lot lately about what he sees as the plight of white farmers in post-apartheid South Africa.
Mr. Trump’s post on Monday blending both subjects came after The New York Post (a publication he reads closely) published an opinion article on Sunday about Mr. Biden’s South African vacation and his security detail.
On Monday afternoon, a reporter asked Mr. Trump about the topic as he was touring the Kennedy Center. “I just heard about it for the first time,” Mr. Trump said. He added that it was “really interesting” and that he planned to “take a look at it.”
A few hours later, he made his post.
He has been on a revenge tour since he returned to the Oval Office, and he has several times exerted his power to revoke Secret Service protection from perceived enemies. His animus toward the Biden family is in part what motivated the former president to pardon his son.