Tag: charity

Trump says ‘who cares’ after Warren takes DNA test, denies $1 million offer

Leave a comment

President Donald Trump claims he “didn’t say” that he would pay $1 million to Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren for taking DNA test to review her Native American heritage, after she released the results of one on Monday morning.

“Who cares?” Trump said when asked about the DNA test. When pressed on the once-promised $1 million payment, Trump responded: “I didn’t say that. You better read it again.”

In fact, Trump did promise $1 million, during a July rally, but only if the test showed she was “an Indian.”

At a rally in July, Trump said: “And we will say, ‘I will give you a million dollars, paid for by Trump, to your favorite charity if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian … we’ll see what she does. I have a feeling she will say no but we will hold it for the debates.”

Warren has released the results of a DNA analysis showing she has distant Native American ancestry in an apparent attempt to pre-empt further questions and attacks should she run for president in 2020.

Warren first faced scrutiny for her purported Native American heritage during her 2012 Senate race. But Trump has revived and amplified the controversy as he eyes Warren as a possible rival, frequently mocking her with the nickname “Pocahontas.”

But Warren now has documentation to back up her family lore — a analysis of her genetic data performed by Carlos Bustamante, a professor of genetics at Stanford and adviser to Ancestry and 23 and Me.

Bustamante’s analysis places Warren’s Native American ancestor between six and 10 generations ago, with the report estimating eight generations.
After his initial “who cares” response, Trump said Monday he hopes Warren runs for president because she will be “easy” to beat.

“I hope she’s running for president because I think she’d be very easy. I do not think she’d be very difficult at all,” Trump said, adding: “I don’t want to say bad things about her because I hope she’s one of the people that get through the process.”

Trump added that Warren would turn the US into Venezuela.

[CNN]

Reality

Here is the video of Trump promising to donate $1 million if Warren proved ‘Indian’ ancestry:

Eric Trump predicts CNN won’t cover Trump Harvey donation hours after network report

Leave a comment

President Trump’s son Eric Trump tweeted on Thursday that CNN wouldn’t report on his father’s pledge to donate $1 million to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.

“So proud!!! Let’s see if @CNN or the #MSM acknowledges this incredible generosity. My guess: they won’t… “  Eric Trump tweeted with a link to a Fox News story.

Three hours earlier, CNN tweeted its coverage of Trump’s pledge, which was announced during Thursday’s White House press briefing.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Trump’s pledge on Thursday. Trump has yet to finalize what group the money will go to.

“He’s actually asked that I check with the folks in this room since you are very good at research and have been doing a lot of reporting into the groups and organizations that have the best and most effective in helping and providing aid and he would love some suggestions from the folks here and I would be happy to take them,” Sanders said.

Sanders also said she did not know if the donation would come from Trump himself or the Trump Foundation.

“I know that the president, he said he was personally going to give, I don’t know the legal part of exactly that but he said his personal money so I would assume that comes directly from him,” she said.

[The Hill]

Reality

We should be skeptical of Trump’s generosity. For years Trump used his charity as a scheme funneling other people’s money into his own pockets, and during the campaign claimed for four months that he donated one million dollars to veterans charities, but lied about it the entire time, only handing the money over once he was caught.

Trump Made No 9/11 Donations in Year After Attack, Despite His Promise

Leave a comment

The New York City Comptroller’s Office has found no evidence that Donald Trump donated to 9/11 charities in the months after the attacks, the agency said.

Trump had promised weeks after the 2001 attack to donate $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund as part of a charity effort by “The Howard Stern Show.”

“My office has reviewed the donations made in the nearly 12 months following the attacks – and we didn’t find evidence that he contributed a single cent to the victims, our first responders, and to our city through the Twin Towers Fund,” New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement to ABC News today.

“In the wake of 9/11, New Yorkers came together, healed, and rebuilt. If Donald Trump claimed to donate and didn’t, if he claimed to support New Yorkers in a time of crisis and refused, then that would be just plain wrong.”

It’s possible that the Republican presidential nominee donated after the two audit periods reviewed by Stringer’s office. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

At the request of multiple news organizations, including the New York Daily News, which first reported the story, Stringer’s office conducted a review of previously sealed records of the Twin Towers Fund and the New York City Public/Private Initiatives Inc., doing business as the Twin Towers Fund, which were set up in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to raise money to support victims’ families, first responders and first responders’ families.

The New York City Comptroller’s Office confirmed to ABC News that it had manually reviewed about 1,500 pages of donor records, containing the names of more than 110,000 individuals and entities that were collected as part of the audits. The audit of the Twin Towers Fund covered the period from Sept. 12, 2001 to Aug. 31, 2002, while the audit of the New York City Public/Private Initiatives Inc., doing business as the Twin Towers Fund, covered the period Sept. 12, 2001 to June 30, 2002.

Stringer’s office found no record of a donation made by Trump or a Trump entity in the year after the tragedy, contrary to the real estate developer’s claims.

(h/t ABC News)

Trump’s Charity Claims Could Violate Fraud Laws

Leave a comment
Trump golfing in the rain

If Donald Trump’s claims that certain of his commercial ventures benefit charity are untrue, he could be held liable under Section 349 of New York’s General Business Law, which forbids deceptive business acts and practices, as well as under charitable solicitation laws, according to legal experts.

In promoting products as varied as Trump University, Trump Vodka, a Trump board game and his latest book, “Crippled America,” the businessman has declared that the proceeds would go to charity. None of Trump’s proceeds from Trump University have gone to charity, and only a few hundred dollars of charitable giving related to Trump Vodka has been accounted for. News organizations have been unable to verify his other claims, and his representatives have been unwilling to provide more information about them or even to confirm them.

While lawyers say Trump could be liable in a number of states for false claims, the official most likely to take up the matter would be Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of New York, where Trump resides and is already the defendant in a consumer fraud case brought by the state over Trump University.

Referring to Trump’s claims about his “Crippled America” book profits, a spokesman for Schneiderman’s office said that the law against deceptive business practices was a more likely avenue of pursuit than the charitable solicitation law. But he added that lawyers at the attorney general’s office had not yet decided whether to look into the matter.

In recent weeks, Trump has come under fire for exaggerating the amount of money he raised for veterans at a campaign event in January and for donating much of that money only after reporters began asking questions about it. A state AG investigation of Trump’s other claims of charitable giving would keep the issue alive and burden the presumptive Republican nominee — already embroiled in a number of lawsuits — with another legal headache.

At least one congressman from New York says Schneiderman should investigate Trump’s claims about “Crippled America.”

“To the extent jurisdiction exists, it seems appropriate that the attorney general should examine whether Trump’s fraudulent schemes extend to his book-promotion activity,” Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries told POLITICO.

Neither Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks, nor Alan Garten, general counsel of the Trump Organization, responded to multiple requests for comment.

At an October campaign stop in Iowa, Trump plugged the upcoming release of the book, saying, “With everything else I’m writing books. This was the last thing. But it was a lot of money that’s going to go to charity, and frankly, I think the title is amazing.”

That same day, Trump’s director of social media, Dan Scavino, tweeted:

Scavino did not respond to a request for comment.

At a press conference tied to the book’s release at Trump Tower in New York last November, Trump said, “The profits of my book? I’m giving them away to a lot of different people, including the vets.”

So far, Trump has made somewhere from $1 million to $5 million in royalties on the book, according to a personal financial disclosure filed last month with the FEC, but Hicks did not respond to repeated questions about whether any of the proceeds went to charity and no donation has been publicized.

If Trump fails to follow through on the statements made by him and his employee, he could be running afoul of the law, according to James Fishman, an emeritus professor of law at Pace University with expertise in non-profit organizations. “In terms of promising to give money to charities, that can be looked at as fraud if he has gotten people to contribute on that basis,” Fishman said.

The charity claims made their way into numerous news reports, social media posts and online reader reviews of the book. “Thank You For Donating Proceeds To Vet Charities!!!” reads the subject line of one review on Amazon. “Proceeds to charity GREAT BOOK!” proclaims another.

A Facebook page set up to promote the book includes a post that reads, “’I just started reading this and it is a great book already and I’m glad you are donating the proceeds to charity!’ – Joe (Unsolicited Amazon Testimonial).”

A Trump fan Facebook group promoted a link for pre-ordering the book this way: “Trump has just went live with the ‘pre-orders’ of his brand new book, ‘Crippled America’!! Trumps campaign manager also confirmed that the proceeds for the book go directly to CHARITY! Support the cause, get educated, and help us MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Secure your copy by pre-ordering today.”

“In general you can’t promote a book by saying the benefits will go to charity when that’s false, and that’s where general consumer protection laws would come in,” said Dan Kurtz, a former assistant attorney general of New York in charge of the state’s Charities Bureau.

Kurtz added that Trump might also be subject to New York’s charitable solicitation laws. Those regulations generally apply to instances where a business markets its goods as benefiting a particular charitable organization, but Kurtz said Trump’s vaguer marketing claims arguably also fall under that law as well.

Kurtz said that the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, might be “on the hook” as well for claims Trump made. A spokesman for the publisher declined to comment on the record.

“Crippled America” is not the only money-making venture that Trump has publicized as benefiting charity. He has also claimed that proceeds or profits from Trump University, Trump Vodka, “The Art of the Deal” and a Trump board game would benefit charity.

Promoting Trump Vodka in 2006, Trump told Larry King, “I’m giving the money to charity.” But the only apparent donation related to Trump Vodka is a “few hundred dollars” given to a group supporting Walter Reed Hospital in connection with a specific promotion, as reported by CNN last month.

Trump marketed Trump University as a charitable venture and said he would give any money he made off of it to charity, but he has not given money from it to charity, as Time reported in November. Trump’s lawyer told Time that the New York billionaire transferred the $5 million he made from Trump University, which is embroiled in multiple fraud lawsuits, back to the business when it landed in legal trouble.

Kurtz said that while older marketing claims of charitable giving, if false, might be too stale to pursue on their own, they would be relevant to more recent cases, like that of “Crippled America.”

“If somebody could demonstrate there’s a pattern, even if the claims themselves aren’t actionable, it shows the propensity to do it,” he said. “It reinforces the case.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Early in his candidacy, Trump boasted about giving $102 million to charity in just the last five years. But when the Washington Post examined the candidate’s 96-page list of contributions, they couldn’t find a single cash gift delivered from Trump’s own pocket.

When Trump held his fundraiser for veterans in order to hide from tough questions from Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, he didn’t physically hand over money to veterans charities until journalists had to figure out that Trump never distributed funds, including his own personal donation.

Four Months After Fundraiser, Trump Finally Gives $1 Million to Veterans Group

2 comments

Almost four months after promising $1 million of his own money to veterans’ causes, Donald Trump moved to fulfill that pledge Monday evening — promising the entire sum to a single charity as he came under intense media scrutiny.

Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, organized a nationally televised fundraiser for veterans’ causes in Des Moines on Jan. 28. That night, Trump said he had raised $6 million,  including the gift from his own pocket.

“Donald Trump gave $1 million,” he said then.

As recently as last week, Trump’s campaign manager had insisted that the mogul had already given that money away. But that was false: Trump had not.

In recent days, The Washington Post and other media outlets had pressed Trump and his campaign for details about how much the fundraiser had actually raised and whether Trump had given his portion.

The candidate refused to provide details. On Monday, a Post reporter used Twitter — Trump’s preferred social-media platform — to search publicly for any veterans groups that had received Trump’s money.

By Monday afternoon, The Post had found none. But it seems to have caught the candidate’s attention.

Later Monday evening, Trump called the home of James K. Kallstrom, a former FBI official who is chairman of the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. The charity aids families of fallen Marines and federal law enforcement officers.

Trump told Kallstrom that he would give the entire $1 million to the group, according to Kallstrom’s wife.  Sue Kallstrom said she was not sure whether the money had been transferred yet. However on May 25th it was confirmed the transaction was completed.

Other big donors to Trump’s fundraiser had already made their gifts weeks before. Why had Trump waited so long?

“You have a lot of vetting to do,” Trump said Tuesday in a telephone interview conducted while he was flying to a campaign rally in Albuquerque.

For this particular donation, it would seem that little new vetting was required because Trump already knew the recipient well. The Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation had already received more than $230,000 in donations from the Donald J. Trump Foundation — a charity controlled by Trump but largely funded by others. Last year, the group gave Trump its “Commandant’s Leadership Award” at a gala in New York.

When asked Tuesday whether he had given the money this week only because reporters had been asking about it, Trump responded: “You know, you’re a nasty guy. You’re really a nasty guy. I gave out millions of dollars that I had no obligation to do.”

Trump’s call on Monday night stood in contradiction to an account given Friday by campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. “The money is fully spent,” Lewandowski said then. “Mr. Trump’s money is fully spent.”

On Tuesday, Trump said Lewandowski would not have been in a position to know that. “I don’t know that Corey would even know when I gave it out,” he said.

In the same interview, Trump said the fundraiser had raised about $5.5 million for veterans overall. He said he was not sure how much of it remained to be given away.

That also contrasted with the account last week from Lewandowski, who said that about $4.5 million had been raised and that Trump’s effort had fallen short of the promised $6 million because some unnamed big donors had backed out.

On Tuesday, Trump said no major contributors had reneged. “For the most part, I think they all came through,” he said. “Some of them came through very late.”

Trump also said he had never actually promised that the fundraiser had raised $6 million. “I didn’t say six,” he said.

But, in video of the event, Trump tells the crowd, “We just cracked $6 million! Right? $6 million.”

Trump was told that he did, indeed, say “$6 million.”

“Well, I don’t, I don’t have the notes. I don’t have the tape of it,” he said. “Play [the tape] for me. Because I’d like to hear it.” Before the video could be cued up, Trump had moved on.

The story of his nighttime gift seemed to highlight a unique quality of Trump: his acute sensitivity to losing face on social media. He had routinely rejected questions about the fundraiser for veterans if they were posed in person.

“Why should I give you records?” Trump said in an interview with The Post earlier this month, when he was asked about the money. “I don’t have to give you records.”

Then, on Monday, a Post reporter publicly queried multiple veterans groups on Twitter, asking whether they had received personal donations from Trump. None had.

Hours later, after 10:38 p.m. Eastern time, Trump responded on Twitter: “While under no obligation to do so, I have raised between 5 & 6 million dollars, including 1million dollars from me, for our VETERANS. Nice!”

And sometime that same evening, Trump called to make the donation to James Kallstrom’s group. Sue Kallstrom wasn’t sure what time the call was, only that it happened after she went to bed at 8 p.m.

“I guess he wants to take care of the vets,” she said. Among its other good works, the foundation provides $30,000 educational grants to the children of the fallen. “The foundation is thrilled, because the [money] is going to help a lot of people. Especially the children.”

Trump’s campaign has said the remainder of the donations would be given out by Memorial Day. Trump said he would ask his staff to send The Post a list of the groups that would receive that money, but his staff did not immediately provide it.

But it did appear that Trump’s staff was preparing to disburse more gifts. In Boston on Tuesday, the founder of  the city’s annual Wounded Vet Bike Run got a call.

“For some reason, a Trump campaign worker reached out to me today  and asked for our nonprofit number, and I gave it to ’em,” said Andrew Biggio, the group’s founder.

The annual motorcycle ride raises money to help veterans and their families, including giving away cars and retrofitting motorcycles for the disabled. He said the staffer did not tell him how much money to expect. “I have no idea what’s coming down the pike,” Biggio said.

In recent weeks, other veterans  groups had been struggling to figure out how to ask for some of Trump’s remaining money. Trump had provided no formal way to apply.

Biggio said he had not formally applied but was pretty sure how he had come to be on Trump’s radar.

“I served in Iraq with Donald Trump’s bodyguard’s son,” he said.

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

Donald Trump made good on his promise to give $1 million dollars to veteran charities, four full months after he claimed he already donated the money.

While a $1 million dollar donation to veterans groups is an amazing gesture, it is hardly altruistic. The televised fundraiser only came about so he could dodge debate questions from Megyn Kelly about his past sexist comments towards women. Then Trump attempted to extort Fox News for an illegal “quid pro quo” donation of $5 million dollars to appear at their Iowa debate. Then for the next 4 months Trump lied again and again when he boasted about his charitable donation to his rallies.

On 1/28, Trump released a press release indicating that Mr. Trump made a $1 million dollar contribution at a special event in Des Moines to benefit vets.

The conservative newspaper The Weekly Standard broke the story on 2/18 that the Trump campaign was refusing to acknowledge how much money was disbursed saying, “You can do your homework and ask the veterans’ organizations.” They did and found out that only about $500,000 was distributed to veterans charities at that time.

On 2/26, the conservative pundit Stuart Varney on Fox Business News corroborated The Weekly Standard’s story with their own investigation by checking with the charities a full month after the fundraiser and found that only $650,000 of the supposed $6 million raised had been distributed to charities.

Two months after the fundraiser on 4/7, the not-very-liberal Wall Street Journal again talked to the veteran charities and found only $2.4 million was distributed.

Then on 5/20, The Washington Post followed up with the 22 veteran charities and only $3.1 million could be accounted for. Furthering the scandal, the Trump campaign confirmed that only $4.5 million and not $6 million was raised while claiming $1 million dollars donated by Trump was already given to the charities but refused to share evidence:

Did Trump make good on his promise to give from his personal funds?

 

“The money is fully spent. Mr. Trump’s money is fully spent,” Lewandowski said.

 

To whom did Trump give, and in what amounts?

 

“He’s not going to share that information,” Lewandowski said.

As recent as 5/23, a day before this story broke, Donald Trump tweeted and was still claiming the money was donated.

And finally 5/24 The Washington Post concluded its investigation which uncovered the story that Trump never gave any money to a veterans charity. Once that fact came to light then, and only then, did Trump cut a check to a single charity.

Then, to the surprise of no one, Trump insulted the reporter who caught him trying to cheat our veterans, then later at a press conference tried to turn this around on the “dishonest” media.

As a side note, this is the first time Donald Trump has given any of his personal money to a charity of any kind in over 5 years.

But Donald Had to Vet the Charity!

Donald Trump donated $100,000 dollars to the same charity in April of 2015. As far as the Trump Organization is concerned, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation was already a trusted charity.

Media

Links

The Washington Post explains their methodology for uncovering the story.

Trump’s Charitable Giving Is Not His Own Personal Cash

One comment
Trump golfing in the rain

Since the first day of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has said that he gave more than $102 million to charity in the past five years.

To back up that claim, Trump’s campaign compiled a list of his contributions — 4,844 of them, filling 93 pages.

But, in that massive list, one thing was missing.

Not a single one of those donations was actually a personal gift of Trump’s own money.

Instead, according to a Washington Post analysis, many of the gifts that Trump cited to prove his generosity were free rounds of golf, given away by his courses for charity auctions and raffles.

The largest items on the list were not cash gifts but land-
conservation agreements to forgo development rights on property Trump owns.

Trump’s campaign also counted a parcel of land that he’d given to New York state — although that was in 2006, not within the past five years.

In addition, many of the gifts on the list came from the charity that bears his name, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which didn’t receive a personal check from Trump from 2009 through 2014, according to the most recent public tax filings. Its work is largely funded by others, although Trump decides where the gifts go.

Some beneficiaries on the list are not charities at all: They included clients, other businesses and tennis superstar Serena Williams.

This list produced by Trump’s campaign — which has not been reported in detail before — provides an unusually broad portrait of Trump’s giving, and his approach to philanthropy in general.

It reveals how Trump has demonstrated less of the soaring, world-changing ambitions in his philanthropy than many other billionaires. Instead, his giving appears narrowly tied to his business and, now, his political interests.

His foundation, for example, frequently gave money to groups that paid to use Trump’s facilities, and it donated to conservatives who could help promote Trump’s rise in the Republican Party. The foundation’s second-biggest donation described on the campaign’s list went to the charity of a man who had settled a lawsuit with one of Trump’s golf courses after being denied a hole-in-one prize.

The tally of Trump’s giving was provided by Trump’s campaign last year to the Associated Press, which was attempting to assess Trump’s recent record of charitable giving. The AP, which did not publish the list, provided it to The Post.

When asked about The Post’s analysis, a top Trump aide acknowledged that none of the gifts had come in cash from the billionaire himself. But, he said, that was because the list was not a complete account of Trump’s gifts.

The aide, Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, said Trump had, in fact, given generously from his own pocket. But Weisselberg declined to provide any documentation, such as saying how much charitable giving Trump has declared in his federal tax filings.

“We want to keep them quiet,” said Weisselberg, who is also treasurer of the Trump Foundation. “He doesn’t want other charities to see it. Then it becomes like a feeding frenzy.”

‘The Grateful Millionaire’

In the early years of his career — when Trump was making a name as America’s human embodiment of success — he was known for acts of real, and well-publicized, philanthropy.

In 1986, Trump heard about a Georgia farmer who’d committed suicide because of an impending foreclosure. He reached out.

“He said, ‘Forget it. I’ll pay it off.’ He paid for it out of his personal money,” said Betsy Sharp, the daughter of the farmer, Leonard Hill III. Trump flew the family to Trump Tower to burn the hated mortgage in front of TV cameras, with an ebony cigarette lighter that said “New York.”

Through a combination of good deeds and good publicity, the idea of Trump as a gallant friend of the little guy caught on. By the late 1990s, as documented by the debunking site Snopes.com, Trump’s name had been grafted onto a classic American urban legend, known to folklorists as “The Grateful Millionaire.”

Trump — it was said in email chains and books of inspirational stories — had once been stranded in a limo. A good Samaritan stopped to help. Trump secretly paid off his mortgage. The legend goes back to at least 1954, when the grateful millionaire was Henry Ford.

The most complete public accounting of Trump’s actual charity so far is the $102 million list provided by his campaign last year, titled “Donald J. Trump Charitable Contributions.”

In places, it appears to be an unedited mash-up of internal lists kept by Trump’s golf clubs, noting all the things they’d given away to anybody. True charities like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children are followed by freebies given away at sales meetings, followed by entries in cryptic internal shorthand. At a Trump golf course in Miami, for instance, the recipient of a $800 gift was listed only as “Brian.”

To identify what the gifts represented, The Post interviewed recipients to find out what they’d received — and matched those gifts to others with the exact same dollar value.

By extrapolation, The Post estimated that Trump claimed credit for at least 2,900 free rounds of golf, 175 free hotel stays, 165 free meals and 11 gift certificates to spas.

“I thought it would be a pretty hot ticket, [and] it was,” said Marion Satterthwaite, who runs a charity that helps bring back dogs that U.S. service members have bonded with overseas. She was holding a silent auction, and one of things she auctioned off was a free round of golf donated by Trump’s private golf club in Colts Neck, N.J. At that club, Trump appeared to claim donations of 76 foursomes, each valued at $1,720. Satterthwaite said that, in her case, it sold for less.

But Trump’s list was also riddled with apparent errors, in which the “charities” that got his gifts didn’t seem to be charities at all.

Trump listed a donation to “Serena William Group” in February 2015, valued at exactly $1,136.56. A spokeswoman for the tennis star said she had attended a ribbon-
cutting at Trump’s Loudoun County, Va., golf course that year for a new tennis center. But Trump hadn’t donated to her charity. Instead, he had given her a free ride from Florida on his plane and a free framed photo of herself.

The Post sent an annotated version of this list — showing the results of its analysis, and its extrapolations about what each gift represented — to the Trump campaign, along with a detailed list of questions about Trump’s giving.

The Trump campaign declined to answer most of the questions or to provide an interview with Trump.

The Post’s analysis showed that the small giveaways from Trump businesses seemed to account for the bulk of the 4,844 transactions that Trump took credit for. But they accounted for only about $6.4 million of the total dollar figure.

The most expensive charitable contributions on Trump’s list, by contrast, dealt with transactions related to real estate.

For one, Trump counted $63.8 million of unspecified “conservation easements.” That refers to legal arrangements — which could bring tax breaks — in which a landowner agrees to forgo certain kinds of development on land that he owns. In California, for example, Trump agreed to an easement that prevented him from building homes on a plot of land near a golf course. But Trump kept the land, and kept making money off it. It is a driving range.

In this election, neither of Trump’s Republican rivals — Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) nor Ohio Gov. John Kasich — has detailed his recent charitable giving. Among the Democrats, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said she and her husband gave 11 percent of their yearly income, and the Clintons have also established a foundation that has collected $2 billion for charity around the world, while also increasing their global celebrity and political network. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) said he gave 5 percent of his yearly income.

Trump has not entirely given up making splashy public gifts.

In 2009, for instance, Trump appeared on the TV show “Extra” and promised that he would pay a struggling viewer’s bills. “This is really a bad time for a lot of people,” Trump said as the contest was announced.

The winner, who got $5,000, was a woman who runs a spray-tanning business.

But the contest’s rules, posted online, made clear that the winner would not be flown to New York like the family Trump helped in the 1980s. Moreover, the rules said, the winner would have to pay for cab fare.

“The winner must live in New York, provide their own transportation to Trump Tower, and be willing to meet Donald on-camera to accept his check,” the rules warned.

According to tax records, the winner’s check came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, the charity created by Trump in the late 1980s. The same was true on Saturday, when Trump made a well-publicized $100,000 gift to the ­National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York. The foundation gave the money after Trump made a brief visit to the museum as he campaigned ahead of next week’s New York primary.

The Trump Foundation

On the $102 million list created by Trump’s campaign, he claims credit for $7 million given by the foundation, where Trump serves as president.

The biggest donors to his foundation in recent years have been other people, most notably Vince and Linda McMahon, top executives at World Wrestling Entertainment. They donated $5 million after Trump made a cameo on “Wrestlemania” in 2007, according to a spokesman for WWE. The spokesman said Trump was paid separately for the appearance. Linda McMahon has since left WWE and is now active in politics. She and her husband both declined to comment about the donation.

Trump’s foundation has operated on a smaller scale than some run by his billionaire peers. Filmmaker George Lucas, for instance, who is tied with Trump at 324th place in Forbes’s list of the world’s billionaires, donated $925 million to his family foundation in 2012. In 2014, Lucas’s foundation gave out $55 million in donations to museums, hospitals, artistic groups and environmental charities.

Media magnate Sumner Redstone, also tied with Trump in the Forbes rankings, gave $28 million from his company to his foundation that year, and the foundation in turn gave out $31 million in gifts.

The Trump Foundation gave out $591,000 in 2014.

“He’s using [the foundation] as a kind of checkbook, with other people’s money,” Leslie Lenkow­sky, a faculty member at Indiana University’s school of philanthropy, said after The Post described the recipients of the Trump Foundation’s gifts.

“Not a good model. It’s not wrong. It’s not unique. But it’s poor philanthropy.”

In 2013, Trump was trying to persuade the V Foundation — a cancer-fighting group founded by Jim Valvano, the college basketball coach who died in 1993 — to hold a fundraiser at his Trump Winery in Virginia.

Trump’s foundation gave $10,000 to the V Foundation that summer, just when the V Foundation later said it was being wooed. He got the fundraiser.

Trump’s foundation also gave to the American Cancer Society, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, all of which have held fundraisers at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.

In 2010, a man named Martin Greenberg was playing in a charity tournament at Trump’s course in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. A $1 million prize was offered to anybody who got a hole in one.

Greenberg did. But then, hours later, he was called back. The rules said the hole-in-one shot had to go 150 yards. But, according to court documents, Trump’s course had made the hole too short.

Greenberg got nothing. He sued.

On the day that Trump and the other parties told the court that they had settled the case, the Donald J. Trump Foundation made its first and only donation to the Martin B. Greenberg Foundation, for $158,000. Both Greenberg and Trump’s campaign declined to comment.

Trump also used the foundation’s money to play the role of a big-hearted billionaire on TV — doling out at least $194,000 to various causes favored by contestants on “Celebrity Apprentice,” Trump’s spinoff reality show that appeared on NBC.

In 2012, NBC Universal made a $500,000 donation to the Trump Foundation. NBC Universal declined to comment about that gift.

In some cases, the recipient was a complete stranger: a club member who stopped him at the pool, another golfer, or a woman who’d just walked into his office.

“I’ll never forget. He said, ‘Debra, you have the ‘it’ factor. He said, ‘I don’t know any other beautiful woman going into the inner city,’ ” said Debra George, a Christian minister in Texas who met Trump when a mutual friend brought her along to his office. Trump asked how she paid for her work.

“It’s kind of like walking on air. We trust God,” she told him. “He said, ‘I’m going to help you.’ ” Trump’s foundation gave her charity $10,000.

Some recipients said they liked the Trump Foundation’s informal approach to giving. “(At) a lot of foundations, you know, there’s a grant process,” said Barbara Abernathy, whose charity helps children with cancer. Not Trump, whom Abernathy had met at a Mar-a-Lago gala. She later asked his people for money, to help a patient’s family afford medicine and a car payment. She got $1,000 in two weeks.”

In 2013, Scott K. York, then the head of the Board of Supervisors in Loudoun County, came to Trump’s son to ask for help. An elementary school in the county needed a $110,000 handicapped-accessible playground. York asked for $10,000. Trump’s foundation gave $7,500.

A month later, the Trump Foundation gave $50,000 to the American Conservative Union Foundation. With donations to that group, Politico has reported, Trump was building a relationship that won him prime speaking slots at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a coveted venue for an aspiring Republican presidential candidate.

In this campaign, Trump said he brought in more than $6 million during a fundraiser for veterans groups he held on Jan. 28 in Iowa.

But the Trump campaign has detailed only about $3 million worth of donations that have been given to veterans groups. Some were given directly by donors recruited by Trump, and in some cases, the Trump Foundation served as a middleman.

Trump’s campaign has said that Trump is continuing to identify and vet new recipients for the money but declined to provide additional details.

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks declined to respond to questions regarding whether Trump has followed through on a pledge to donate $1 million of his own money to the cause.

Still, as he has campaigned, Trump has benefited from a reputation for generosity.

“His limousine broke down one time, a couple stopped and helped him. He paid off their mortgage a few days later. These are all things that you never hear about Donald Trump,” Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, said on Fox News’s “Hannity” in January.

The Grateful Millionaire. The legend, alive and well.

In a telephone interview, Falwell, who has endorsed Trump, was asked: Did you ever ask Trump if that story was true?

“I never did,” Falwell said. “But, Trey, didn’t you search that on Google?”

“I didn’t,” his son Trey said. “But somebody did.”

“It was in some publication in 1995,” the elder Falwell concluded. “But I forget which publication.”

(h/t Washington Post)

Veterans’ Charities Receive Fraction of Money Raised by Trump Event

One comment

More than two months after Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump claimed to have raised $6 million for veterans’ charities at a fundraiser held on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, most of the organizations targeted to receive the money have gotten less than half of that amount.

The Wall Street Journal, citing a survey of the 22 groups listed by Trump’s campaign as prospective recipients for the money, reported that 19 organizations had obtained a total of $2.4 million from Trump’s foundation or associates.

Of the three other charities, one declined to disclose how much it had received, another said it needed to submit more paperwork before receiving any money, and the third didn’t respond to questions by the Journal.

Fox Business Network first reported in late February that only a fraction of the pledged donations had made their way to the veterans groups.

At the time, FBN reported, several groups said they had not received any money. And seven of the 22 told Fox Business Network they had received a total of $650,000. Other groups did not respond to inquiries at the time.

Trump held the Jan. 29 benefit in lieu of attending a GOP debate hosted by Fox News. The real estate mogul had declined to appear at the debate, claiming that he had not been treated fairly by the network.

All 19 groups that confirmed receiving money from the Trump event got checks in the mail. Sixteen charities saw donations arrive in late February in increments of $50,000 or $100,000. The other three reported smaller donations in March, with those amounts averaging between $5,000 and $15,000.

Keith David of the Task Force Dagger Foundation told the Journal that he was confused about whether a $50,000 check from Trump associate Stewart Rahr’s foundation was tied to the Iowa event. He said he had been informed by a Trump representative that it was.

“It’s a little weird,” David said. “It looks like it’s from a totally separate organization.”

Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, told Fox News that Trump has in fact “given to the 22 groups we originally announced and many others.”

“Additionally, we are continuing to distribute the money raised as it comes in and we are expanding the list of groups receiving contributions,” she said in a statement. “If the media spent half as much time highlighting the work of these groups and how our Veterans have been so mistreated, rather than trying to disparage Mr. Trump’s generosity for a totally unsolicited gesture for which he had no obligation, we would all be better for it. He has raised millions of dollars for the Vets, and rather than being thanked, he is attacked. As Mr. Trump said, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’”

She did not say how much money raised at the event had been distributed, or how much each group has received. 

The Journal, citing the Trump Foundation’s tax returns, reported that the nonprofit had given just $180,000 to veterans’ charities over the past decade. Hicks said that amount did not include personal donations by the candidate.

At least one prominent charity declined to receive any money from the January fundraiser. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) founder Paul Rieckhoff called the event a “political stunt”.

(h/t Fox News)

Donald Trump Throws a Grand Old Party to Avoid a Debate

4 comments

No one ever really doubted that Donald Trump could pull off a major counter-programing feat — even when competing with a GOP debate that was expected to draw millions of viewers.

He did it Thursday night, dazzling a crowd of hundreds of enthusiastic supporters by announcing that he had raised more than $6 million for veterans in one day — $1 million of it from his own checkbook. “We love our vets,” he said.

“You know, my whole theme is make America great again and that’s what we’re going to do — and we wouldn’t have even been here if it weren’t for our vets,” Trump said.

Even Trump seemed a bit surprised that he had pulled off his stunt: “Look at all the cameras. This is like the Academy Awards,” the real estate magnate said as he took the stage in an auditorium at Drake University about 20 minutes after the debate began a few miles away. “We’re actually told that we have more cameras than they do by quite a bit, and you know what that’s really in honor of our vets.”

The rally was a restrained performance by Trump standards. He dispensed with his usual riff about his poll numbers and mostly avoided jabs at his fellow candidates (with the exception of a “low-energy” shot at Jeb Bush).

Instead he delivered a speech mostly focused on the problems veterans have faced when returning from Iraq and Afghanistan — inadequate healthcare and housing, drug abuse, mental health issues and homelessness.

“Our vets are being mistreated. Illegal immigrants are treated better in many cases than our vets and it’s not going to happen any more. It’s not going to happen any more.”

Clearly enjoying his evening away from the debate, Trump also told the audience what could be another media sensation for his campaign: the fact that his daughter Ivanka is pregnant. “Ivanka, I said, it would be so great if you had your baby in Iowa. It would be so great — I’d definitely win!”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Trump lost Iowa. He acknowledged that this event may have backfired. Voters in the Hawkeye State take their responsibly of being first seriously, and the debate that Trump skipped was the final, and critically important, debate ahead of the caucuses. “I think some people were disappointed that I didn’t go into the debate,” Trump said while in New Hampshire.

The fact is Trump did not attend the seventh Republican debate and instead hosted a rival event due to his intense fear of Megyn Kelly and the hilarious response by Fox News that mocked his inability to handle simple questions from reporters.

Trump was also criticized by also overselling the event and not managing it well. According to a statement by Drake University, the location for Trump’s Thursday night event, the auditorium is limited to a 700-person capacity, but the event had been “significantly over-ticketed by the Trump campaign.”

It is important to note that in 2012 when Michelle Bachmann skipped a debate hosted by Newsmax, someone had some choice critical words for her:

On the plus side, Trump raised a very impressive $6 million dollars for veterans. Or did he?

Media