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WaPo: Trump boasts about his philanthropy. But his giving falls short of his words.

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Loudninja

Member
Much more in the link,Thanks adam!
In the fall of 1996, a charity called the Association to Benefit Children held a ribbon-cutting in Manhattan for a new nursery school serving children with AIDS. The bold-faced names took seats up front.

There was then-Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) and former mayor David Dinkins (D). TV stars Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford, who were major donors. And there was a seat saved for Steven Fisher, a developer who had given generously to build the nursery.

Then, all of a sudden, there was Donald Trump.

“Nobody knew he was coming,” said Abigail Disney, another donor sitting on the dais. “There’s this kind of ruckus at the door, and I don’t know what was going on, and in comes Donald Trump. [He] just gets up on the podium and sits down.”

Trump was not a major donor. He was not a donor, period. He’d never given a dollar to the nursery or the Association to Benefit Children, according to Gretchen Buchenholz, the charity’s executive director then and now.

But now he was sitting in Fisher’s seat, next to Giuliani.

“Frank Gifford turned to me and said, ‘Why is he here?’ ” Buchenholz recalled recently. By then, the ceremony had begun. There was nothing to do.

“Just sing past it,” she recalled Gifford telling her.

So they warbled into the first song on the program, “This Little Light of Mine,” alongside Trump and a chorus of children — with a photographer snapping photos, and Trump looking for all the world like an honored donor to the cause.

Afterward, Disney and Buchenholz recalled, Trump left without offering an explanation. Or a donation. Fisher was stuck in the audience. The charity spent months trying to repair its relationship with him.

“I mean, what’s wrong with you, man?” Disney recalled thinking of Trump, when it was over.
In repeated interviews with The Post this year, Trump has declined to supply details about his giving, saying that if charities knew what Trump had donated they would badger him to give more.

“I give mostly to a lot of different groups,” Trump said in one interview.

“Can you give us any names?” asked The Post’s Drew Harwell in May.

“No, I don’t want to. No, I don’t want to,” Trump responded. “I’d like to keep it private.”

Of the $7.8 million in personal giving that The Post identified, about 70 percent — $5.5 million — went to the Trump Foundation, which was founded in 1987. All of that giving came before 2009; since then, the foundation’s tax records show no donations at all from Trump to his foundation. Its coffers have been filled by others, including $5 million from pro-wrestling executives Vince and Linda McMahon.

At least $1.1 million of Trump’s giving has come in the last six months.

That includes a gift that first brought Trump’s charity — and the gap between the promises and the substance of his giving — to the center of his presidential campaign.

In January, Trump skipped a GOP primary debate in a feud with Fox News and held a televised fundraiser for veterans. In that broadcast, Trump said he’d personally donated to the cause: “Donald Trump gave $1 million,” he said.

Months later, The Post could find no evidence Trump had done so. Then, Corey Lewandowski — Trump’s campaign manager at the time — called to say the money had been given out. In private. No details. “He’s not going to share that information,” Lewandowski said.

In reality, at that point, Trump had given nothing.

Trump didn’t give away the $1 million until a few days later, as the news media sought to check Lewandowski’s false claim. Trump gave it all to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, which helps families of fallen Marines. Trump bristled at this reporter’s suggestion that he had only given the money away because the media was asking about it.

“You know, you’re a nasty guy. You’re really a nasty guy,” Trump said. “I gave out millions of dollars that I had no obligation to do.”

Later, in August, Trump also gave $100,000 to a church near Baton Rouge. He sent the check after visiting the church during a tour of flood-ravaged areas.

For years, Trump built a reputation as somebody whose charity was as big as his success.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...ory.html?postshare=1591477767717547&tid=ss_tw
 

Jackpot

Banned
Wish this would sink him. No different then when people falsely claim to have been soldiers in combat and such.
 

greatgeek

Banned
As a "multi-billionaire," there's something very wrong with you if you carry around a fake million-dollar bill to give to the poors.
 

Siegcram

Member
As dreadful as this election has been and continues to be, it has produced some of the finest high-profile journalism in years.
 

Linkura

Member
In 1997, for instance, he was “principal for a day” at a public school in an impoverished area of the Bronx. The chess team was holding a bake sale, Hot & Crusty danishes and croissants. They were $5,000 short of what they needed to travel to a tournament.

Trump had brought something to wow them.

“He handed them a fake million-dollar bill,” said David MacEnulty, a teacher and the chess team’s coach.

The team’s parent volunteers were thrilled.

Then disappointment.

Trump then gave them $200 in real money and drove away in a limousine.

Why just $200?

“I have no idea,” MacEnulty said. “He was about the most clueless person I’ve ever seen in that regard.”

What the fuck.

What the fuck.
 

Jonnax

Member
Turning upto a charity event and sitting with donors when you haven't even donated a cent is ultra scummy.
 

Kinyou

Member
Maybe he'll spin this regarding the Billy Bush thing

"See, I just talk about stuff. It's not like I actually do any of it. I'm a pathological liar"
 

Loudninja

Member
Such a petty nasty person.
“I want to give it to my favorite charity, and it’s just 10 grand,” Leslie Knauer, the lead singer for the band, recalled Trump saying.

They shot the video, Knauer said.

Then, a few days later, the band got a call.

“You know, $10,000 really isn’t a Trump kind of donation,” Trump said, according to interviews Knauer gave at the time. He wanted $250,000.

The move backfired. The band re-shot the video with a look-a-like. Knauer said they gave Trump nothing.

“Then he said [publicly] he hated the song,” Knauer recalled. “It was horrible.
 

SpaceWolf

Banned
When this election is finally over, I hope the world signs a contract that'll stop anyone from talking about Trump ever again, Poochie style.
 

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
I'm gonna copy my PoliGAF post over to here:

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/11/nyregion/celebrity-visits-show-what-s-missing-in-city-schools.html

Everyone should read this too. This is the original reporting of Trump's lame bake sale encounter, which includes him awkwardly offering to buy Nikes for students.

Mr. Trump glided to the microphone.

''First of all, who likes Nike sneakers?'' he asked. All 300 fifth graders raised their hands. Mr. Trump leaned in to drop the bombshell. ''If everybody puts their name on a piece of paper right now, I will pick 15 people and I'll take you to the new Nike store that I just opened at Trump Tower.''

The fifth graders erupted in frenzied excitement at the promise of a trip to what Mr. Trump described as the ''inner city called 57th and Fifth.'' But a little while later, 11-year-old Andres Rodriguez had a question.

''Why,'' asked Andres, whose father is dead and whose mother cannot work because of a bad leg, ''did you offer us sneakers if you could give us scholarships?''

It was a split second that split the distance wide open between the world of P.S. 70 and the celebrity constellation of Mr. Trump, who did not go to public school and whose children do not either.
Mr. Trump's sneaker lottery caused no small measure of havoc yesterday at P.S. 70, in Tremont in the Bronx. After he picked 20 students from the fifth-grade assembly, one girl who didn't make the cut told Ms. Simon that she was upset.

Natalie Blackwell, a fifth-grade teacher, was consoling her entire class of nonwinners -- ''I don't want them to think that everything in life is going to go their way,'' she said -- when Mr. Trump got wind of the disappointment and decided that that class could get sneakers, too. Later, he extended the offer to 30 special education students.

The whole thing was a bit awkward for Ms. Simon, a popular principal who tends to concentrate on problems like the crowding of 1,700 students into classrooms built for 1,400 and how to get more than 40 percent of her third graders to read on grade level. Instead, she found herself telling fifth graders to be pleased that Mr. Trump has ''brought enough beautiful, psychedelic Trump Tower hats for every child.''

Later, she said: ''I have a reading test next Tuesday. That's more important than this.''
To the student who wanted to know why he had not donated money for scholarships, he said: ''Truth? I don't know the answer to that question.''
 

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
I don't think we have ever had anyone so objectively fake run for President and get > 30% of the vote.
 
Quoting myself from PoliGAF on this because I really just don't know what else to say about this stuff:
Jesus... The fuck is wrong with this guy. I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but yet he finds a way to do it somehow with just how self-absorbed, clueless, narcissistic, and completely devoid from any type of empathy he is. The stuff in this article... Jesus.

And totally agreed that the work he's done deserves a Pulitzer.

So many accounts of Trump showing up at charity events and stealing the spotlight, while having donated nothing.
Like... who actually does that? Who's that completely full of themselves to that extent? That's Saturday morning cartoon villain shit, but yet he's a real 70 year old man. I can't...
 

Keio

For a Finer World
The problem I guess is that it's hard to compress this to a sound bite. "Trump doesn't really donate to charity" isn't as catchy as grabbing pussies, Ben Ghazi or emails emails emails :(

For me this article sums up why he can't be president.
 

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
David Fahrenthold ‏@Fahrenthold 3m3 minutes ago
1/Interesting! After not responding to Q's for days, Trump spox @borisep sent a statement 5 mins after story posted....

2/Statement said @realDonaldTrump has donated "Tens of milliions" from own pocket. But no details, and no proof. I've asked for both...

3/I'll update you when I get those details.

4/I mean, @realDonaldTrump & @BorisEP wouldn't say that sort of thing -- at this point -- if they didn't have details to back it up.

Right?
 

sonicmj1

Member
This article is absolutely loaded with ugly anecdotes.

Then, in 1987 Trump published “The Art of the Deal.”

He became a national celebrity — and made his charity a key part of his brand.

“I don’t do it for the money. I’ve got enough, more than I’ll ever need,” Trump wrote on the book’s first page.

So, Trump said in interviews, if he made money off the book in which he wrote he didn’t need money, he would give it to charity.

“To the homeless, to Vietnam veterans, for AIDS, multiple sclerosis,” Trump told the New York Times two years later. “Originally, I figured they’d get a couple of hundred thousand, but because of the success of ‘The Art of the Deal,’ they’ll get four or five million.’”

So in 1987, Trump signed the forms to incorporate the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The paperwork warned that he could not use the charity’s money to help political candidates. Nor could he use it for the benefit of “any member, trustee, director or officer” of the charity.

That first year, Trump made himself president.

He put in $144,050.

Then he used $100 of the foundation’s money to buy a two-person membership to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The behavior described in the article is completely disqualifying for anyone purporting to serve the public.
 

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
David Fahrenthold ‏@Fahrenthold 3m3 minutes ago
1/Interesting! After not responding to Q's for days, Trump spox @borisep sent a statement 5 mins after story posted....

2/Statement said @realDonaldTrump has donated "Tens of milliions" from own pocket. But no details, and no proof. I've asked for both...
Laughable. They keep saying it but won't provide a lick of evidence.
 
David Fahrenthold ‏@Fahrenthold 3m3 minutes ago
1/Interesting! After not responding to Q's for days, Trump spox @borisep sent a statement 5 mins after story posted....

2/Statement said @realDonaldTrump has donated "Tens of milliions" from own pocket. But no details, and no proof. I've asked for both...
Heh, wonder what changed his mind... That he suddenly spoke up now, once it's actually posted and available for all to see, means he must know that this one is going to sting a bit. Oh well.
 

Jintor

Member
David Fahrenthold ‏@Fahrenthold 3m3 minutes ago
1/Interesting! After not responding to Q's for days, Trump spox @borisep sent a statement 5 mins after story posted....

2/Statement said @realDonaldTrump has donated "Tens of milliions" from own pocket. But no details, and no proof. I've asked for both...

3/I'll update you when I get those details.

4/I mean, @realDonaldTrump & @BorisEP wouldn't say that sort of thing -- at this point -- if they didn't have details to back it up.

Right?

Lmao.

Exact same game plan as the article is already exposing
 
This is why we have yet to see his taxes and if "god forbid", we'll never see them if he somehow wins. Can you freaking imagine?
 
Heh, wonder what changed his mind... That he suddenly spoke up now, once it's actually posted and available for all to see, means he must know that this one is going to sting a bit. Oh well.
It's a strategy to call WaPo baseless, biased librul media.

They will say WaPo is lying about Trump. Won't mention that Fahrenthold asked them a million times to answer. Just that WaPo is biased and lying.
 
This is why we have yet to see his taxes and if "god forbid", we'll never see them if he somehow wins. Can you freaking imagine?
I can't at this point. I know that they would be chuck full of all kinds of fuckery, but what flavor exactly, I couldn't begin to imagine at this point.
 
This is how rich people stay rich, by not letting go of their money.

Not all Rich... Trump's net worth is estimated at $3.7bil Bill Gates and Warren Buffet given more to charity that Trump has made in his entire career, these guys given more to Charity than Trump's current worth...I remember reading Gates gave as of 2011 $28billion to charity..
 

dramatis

Member
Quoting myself from PoliGAF on this because I really just don't know what else to say about this stuff:
He wants attention, that's why he shows up at donation events that he doesn't donate to.

He wants to be known as a good man without doing the good part. He wants to be adored and famous without earning it.
 

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
I can't at this point. I know that they would be chuck full of all kinds of fuckery, but what flavor exactly, I couldn't begin to imagine at this point.

IRS: "We're going to have an audit. I'll be YUUUGE. And that audit just got 10 feet higher"
 
VVYd4x8.jpg
 

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
Meanwhile, there's that WaPo article from back in April.

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.

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 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.
 
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