Perhaps Donald Trump isn’t as charitable as he’d like you to believe.
The Washington Post tore through 93 pages worth of 4,844 Donald J. Trump Foundation donations made over a half-decade, finding that not a one of them came directly from the wallet of the GOP candidate. While the Trump Foundation has been generous on paper, the man who controls it didn’t actually donate any of his own money between 2009 and 2014, the newspaper found.
By the way, that lengthy list of contributions the reporters carefully combed through — it came directly from the Trump campaign. It also had one glaring error: A $26 million land donation from 2006 that was too old to be included.
This would all seem to be in conflict with Trump’s claims that he’s given more than $102 million to charity over the past five years. Here’s what Trump did give away, instead: a ton of free golf rounds for charity auctions and raffles. And to be fair, those are, of course, not without value.
While Trump hasn’t personally donated since 2008 to the foundation that bears his name, he does still make the decisions about where the money goes. And some of it hasn’t even gone to charity, instead ending up in the pockets of clients, other businesses, and even tennis star Serena Williams.
It should be noted that 2014 was the most-recent year available, due to the nature of public tax filings. In theory, Trump’s contributions for 2015 may be different, and may have been included in his personal statements.
The Trump Foundation, which since 2004 has individually been funded more heavily by WWE owners Vince and Linda McMahon than Trump himself, has handed off its most money through land-conservation agreements to forgo development rights on property Trump owns.
Beyond the McMahons, other top donors across the studied decade include Inside Sports & Entertainment Group’s Richard Ebers, NBCUniversal, and Comedy Central. Those latest two networks did so due to agreements surrounding “Celebrity Apprentice” and its host’s “Comedy Central Roast.”
Read the entire story here.