I read something that put this in perspective.

The notion that somehow we the taxpayers are paying an "extra" $38,000 per day is nonsense - those agents are getting paid no matter whether they are guarding Bernie or not.

From the article:

The sleight-of-hand comes from taking a specific budget item and assuming that if it wasn’t there, the costs associated with it would disappear rather than be displaced. Wagner does this by saying “protection can cost taxpayers more than $38,000 a day,” which gives the reader the impression that if Sanders dropped out, “taxpayers” would magically get back $38,000.

Does anyone think the Secret Service is going to fire the exact number of agents assigned to Sanders the day he drops out? Does anyone think the additional vehicles and equipment needed will quickly be pawned off and the money transferred over to Johnny Taxpayer? Does anyone repeating this talking point think that if the Sanders campaign had ended one week ago the US federal government would somehow be $166,000 richer?

The whole article is worth a read - it completely debunks this "story."

There's been some pushback on this meme

Dear Media: Stop Your Petty Trolling About Bernie Sanders’ Secret Service Protection

U. S. Uncut

Sanders still receives protection from a Secret Service detail, which he’s had since February after splitting delegates with Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus. Now that the primaries and caucuses are over, the media has attempted to paint the senator and presidential candidate as selfish for continuing to receive Secret Service protection at the cost of $38,000 a day.

[...]

As lawyer Esha Krishnaswamy explained in a series of tweets, presidential candidates have no say in when they get their Secret Service detail or how long they keep it during the course of a campaign.

[...]

In feigning outrage over a Secret Service cost that Sanders doesn’t even control, the media is also being incredibly hypocritical in its supposed stewardship over tax dollars. None of the articles demanding Sen. Sanders drop out to save $38,000 mention the daily cost of the Fed buying up $3.5 trillion in toxic assets from big banks between 2008 and 2015, amounting to $1.3 billion per day. They also neglect to mention the cost of $100 billion in lost annual revenue due to offshore corporate tax loopholes, which amounts to approximately $274 million per day. Also missing from the media outrage is the daily $212 million cost of the Afghanistan war.

[...]

Sanders, who has won over 45 percent of pledged delegates, has every right to continue his campaign to the Democratic National Convention in July. The media’s latest attack on his campaign is both dishonest and misleading.

And then there's this from FAIR (Fairness in Accuracy and Reporting: (Bolding Mine)

No, Sanders’ Secret Service Detail Isn’t Costing ‘Taxpayers’ $38,000 a Day

The sleight-of-hand comes from taking a specific budget item and assuming that if it wasn’t there, the costs associated with it would disappear rather than be displaced. Wagner does this by saying “protection can cost taxpayers more than $38,000 a day,” which gives the reader the impression that if Sanders dropped out, “taxpayers” would magically get back $38,000.

Does anyone think the Secret Service is going to fire the exact number of agents assigned to Sanders the day he drops out? Does anyone think the additional vehicles and equipment needed will quickly be pawned off and the money transferred over to Johnny Taxpayer? Does anyone repeating this talking point think that if the Sanders campaign had ended one week ago the US federal government would somehow be $166,000 richer?

Of course not, because anyone with a passing understanding of how federal budgets work knows that budgets are based on approximates, not line items picked on an as-needed basis. So, even if the claim is true as such—even if the $38,000 is in reference to monies needed beyond the Secret Service’s normal course of operation—it still doesn’t make any sense. Until the Secret Services asks Congress for additional funds, there is no money being added or taken from their actual budget, and thus no money being added or taken away from “the taxpayer.”

[...]

This messaging trick has been used against Clinton, too, with stories such as “Investigating Hillary Clinton’s Emails Costs As Much As $13,000 A Day” (Vocativ, 3/29/16). In this case as well, a price tag is presented as though the FBI agents working her case would otherwise be fired if they weren’t kept busy with the email probe. But the FBI, like the Secret Service, doesn’t have 100 percent labor liquidity, rendering these type of cartoon breakdowns at best misleading and at worst demagogic.

Ever since this primary started, it's been 24/7 Trump coverage over there. The fearmongering from them is out of control. I think they might actually have more Trump articles than TOP has Hillary ones. They've certainly made out like bandits this election season by churning out endless clickbait to scare the partisan rabble.

Not to mention the fact that Bernie gets endlessly sandbagged there. They have a couple of decent guys writing editorials about him but that's about it. Then again, what else should we expect from a news aggregator/tabloid that seems borderline schizophrenic in its coverage, hyping celebrity nudity and misbehavior on the one hand while promoting stories about body image, feminism, and social justice on the other. That place is all kinds of messed up.

They both stopped reporting the news a long time ago when they decided to make up the news instead. I haven't clicked on HP since it decided to put horoscopes on the drop-down banner and removed the science link. Not that the science was much more than Science Daily regurgitations anyway, but still horoscopes? And Arianna, from her lofty perch, is obsessed with sleep deprivation?

Maybe HRC could get her Goldman Sachs pals to pitch in some cash to cover the costs. She calls Sanders a friend, right? One would think she wouldn't want a friend of hers to be vulnerable to assassinations, yeah?

i haven't read huffpo since they were bought out by AOL. didn't realize they still existed, they've got to be costing someone some $$.