A portrait of Trump the donor: Free rounds of golf, but no personal cash
By David A. Fahrenthold and Rosalind S. Helderman April 10 at 8:49 PM
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.
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