Donald Trump just loves to brag about his generosity. He has said that he is the first one to help those in need. Now The Associated Press is checking on the truth of his bragging statements.
Trump has insisted that he has donated $102 million to charity over the past five years. Like so much of what the Trumpster says, the truth is a lot more complex.
In the first place, there is very little evidence that Trump himself has donated anything at all. Even political donations made in his name have come from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
Take, for example, the questionable $25,000 that went to Florida’s attorney general for her reelection, just days before she dropped a lawsuit against Trump University. That money came, with shaky legality, from the Trump Foundation, and not from Trump himself.
Well, so what? You might think that the “Trump Foundation” is funded by Donald, right?
No, not right.
Trump’s pattern of stiffing charities https://t.co/8weRtqdaQ0
Don wants to be known as a philanthropist without actually giving to charity— margaret stuart md (@marstu67) June 2, 2016
The most recent records available show that Trump has donated NOT ONE dollar to his Foundation since 2009.
Not one. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Stingy with the dinero.
Trump’s foundation relies on donations from outside sources. This has included, most notably, Vince and Linda McMahon. Both McMahons are top-level World Wrestling Entertainment executives, and both McMahons absolutely refused to talk about their donations to the Trump Foundation.
Trump has also bragged about how much land he has donated to worthy recipients. A close look at those donations, however, show that in many cases Trump has actually given himself a tax break by donating the land.
One example of this type of sleazy anti-charity is the case of 11.5 acres of land that he donated in 2015 to the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy. The parcel overlooks the Pacific and Trump paid $27 million for it. Sounds very generous, doesn’t it?
It turns out that Trump donated the land only after he learned that he would not be able to build luxury homes on it because there was a danger of landslides. So he donated the “useless” land and got himself a nice tax write off instead.
Trump’s people did provide a list of recent Trump donations, according to the Washington Post via AP. Most of those donations were in the form of free golf games at a Trump course, free use of a Trump hotel spa, free meals at a Trump restaurant, and free hotel stays.
Meaning that all of this came from Trump’s businesses, not from the great man himself.
The campaign declined to answer when asked for a list of actual donations that Donald J. Trump, the individual and not the business, gave to any charity.
One aide to Trump still insists that Trump has, in fact, given generous personal donations. Somehow keeping a straight face, the aide said:
“We want to keep them quiet. He doesn’t want other charities to see it. Then it becomes like a feeding frenzy.“
You can’t make this stuff up.
For more on Trump’s “generous” nature, watch this video:
Featured Image: A Screenshot Of Secular Talk Video Via YouTube
