President Barack Obama’s daughters Malia and Sasha are reportedly on vacation in the Bahamas for Spring Break, which drew condemnation from Republican lawmaker Steve King.
Conservative news website Breitbart.com reported the two were on the island chain, citing an unnamed source. The White House declined to confirm whether the claim was true.
“Rumor confirmed: friends saw the first daughters with a gaggle of friends being escorted to the held elevator,” one person said on Facebook, according to the website. On Twitter, another wrote: “Obama daughters at the same restaurant as me...in the bahamas.”
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On Wednesday, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) slammed the White House for the reported vacation.
“It’s hard to stomach. When we’re tightening our belts, we should either all do it or none of us do it. Either all of us should do it or none of us should do it. This, I am pretty tolerant, I always have been, I usually shut my mouth. This is not acceptable.,” he said, according to Think Progress. King was referring to the sequestration cuts that went into effect in March.
Breitbart also cited a Judicial Watch report last year that said Malia Obama’s trip to Mexico in 2012, where she was protected by Secret Service agents, cost $115,000 in taxpayer money.
As NBC News and others reported, the first family uses their own money to pay for their vacations.
But King said that when Malia went to Mexico last year, it was “was at our expense, too.”
“And now to the Bahamas at one of the most expensive places there. That is the wrong image to be coming out of the White House,” he continued.
The Media Matters website chastised Breitbart for publishing information about the Obama girls’ wherabouts.
It said Breitbart ignored “the decades-old journalistic tradition that media outlets should not report on a president’s minor children when they are not attending ‘official or semi-official events’ for privacy and security reasons.”
