13,000 Marines Apply for White House Detail After President Trump’s Election-Unproven!
Summary of eRumor:
More than 13,000 Marines applied for White House guard duty after President Donald Trump was elected, none applied during President Barack Obama’s eight years in office and had to be assigned.
The Truth:
There’s no way to verify claims that more than 13,000 Marines applied for “White House detail” after President Trump was elected, or claims that no Marines applied for White House duty during President Obama’s eight years in office.
The notion that Marines eagerly applied to serve President Trump in the so-called White House detail appears to have started with a Facebook group called Conservative Veterans for America. The group posted an image of Trump saluting a Marine with the inscription, “13,506 Marines applied for White House Detail last week. None applied over the last eight years, they had to be assigned!”
The post doesn’t cite any sources to back up the very specific claim that 13,506 Marines applied for White House detail — and it doesn’t explain what, exactly, White House detail is. The closest thing that we could find to White House detail were “Marine White House Sentries” who stand guard outside the West Wing while the president and vice president are working inside. This 2009 video, posted by Obama White House staff, explains that just four Marines are selected to serve as Marine White House Sentries:
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjMNjGsU86Q[/embedyt]
One of the Marines who appeared in the video appeared to contradict the claim that nobody wanted to hold the post while President Obama was in office by saying, “The White House post is one of those posts people always tell you about, but nobody ever expects to come here. It’s very selective. There are only four Marines in the entire Marine Corps that gets to do it. So I was pretty lucky to get the position.”
We couldn’t find any public information about how the four Marine White House Sentries are selected. We also couldn’t find any information on the application process, or even confirm that one exists. Given all that, we’re calling this one “unproven.”