DONALD TRUMP IS PROVING THAT HE'S A BIG PHONEY

…Colbert dared Trump to donate #1 million….it didn’t happen.

 

Trump’s tax returns would probably show how big of a phony he is really.

 

If you are looking for the reason that Donald Trump isn’t offering up his tax returns, let’s start with something that his son, Eric Trump said, and then what happened.

 

Son Eric Trump, said in a recent interview that his father gives "millions and millions and millions" of his own money to charity,  He added that this includes hundreds of thousands to Eric Trump's own charitable foundation.

 

When asked if he would provide details of his father's gifts to the Eric Trump Foundation, to confirm that they really existed, Eric Trump said he would check.

 

Several hours later, he wrote back that he would not provide any details.  "We are going to maintain anonymity," Eric Trump wrote in an email message a few hours later.  He ended with, "I hope you understand."

 

The Washington Post has since written a series of stories about Donald Trump's giving to charity.  All The Post is trying to do is to conform all the millions that Trump keeps saying that he donates to all kinds of charities.  They are just seeking the hard evidence that the mogul is living up to all his promises of donating millions of dollars of his own money to charitable causes.

 

As part of that reporting, The Post has since reached out to more than 200 charities with supposed ties to Donald Trump, asking whether they had received any personal donations from him.  Over a period of more than seven years, between 2008 and this May, The Post only found one personal donation from Donald Trump, and it was worth less than $10,000.

 

Eric Trump said that his father had made generous personal gifts to his own charity, a 10-year-old foundation that says it has donated and pledged almost $28 million to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

 

"My father has given me and my foundation hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he’s given other charities millions and millions and millions of dollars," Eric Trump said.

 

The Washington Post reporter, David Fahrenthold, is now investigating how much Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has given to charity.

 

The Post had made efforts to reach the Eric Trump Foundation, and even Eric Trump himself, via email and Twitter.  Finally, Eric Trump called The Post. He denounced Post’s reporting on the donations, often in profane terms. "I’m just saying, Jesus Christ, why is this guy [Fahrenthold] trying to f---ing kill us?" Eric Trump said at one point.

 

So, Trump has promised that he donated millions to charity, but they have only been able to find less than that $10,000 over that 7 year period.

 

If this all about me, I would do as Trump is doing and also not be publishing and distributing any copies of my tax returns.

 

So, Eric Trump has criticized The Post for a recent article and a recent Twitter messages by this reporter.  It was about a payment made by the Eric Trump Foundation to one of Donald Trump's golf courses.

 

"It’s disgusting. It is so disgusting what’s happening," Eric Trump said. "I’m saving dying children. We do tremendous good for people. And you’re sitting there tearing us apart."

 

That item he’s referring to is detailed in a 2014 tax filing by the Eric Trump Foundation. The foundation had notified the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that it had paid $87,665 to one of Donald Trump's golf courses. The tax filing called that payment a "charge for the use of the golf club" during the Eric Trump Foundation's fundraiser golf tournament.

 

So, basically they were using the golf course tournament as a donation

 

But Eric Trump said the payment was not actually for the use of the club. In fact, he said, the Trump golf course had made no money at all from hosting his foundation's tournament.  Donald Trump's son insists that the payment was not improper.

 

 

Sons Eric and Don may have the Trump name, the money, and the genes, but they are quite different from their dad.

 

Eric Trump said, the tournament payment was actually to cover the cost of outside vendors: to rent a stage, to rent extra golf carts and to hire extra golf caddies. In the past, Eric Trump said, his foundation had cut separate checks to all these outside parties. In 2014, he said, they decided to have the golf course handle the administrative burden of paying all the outside vendors. Then his foundation just wrote one check to reimburse the golf course.

 

In other areas, Eric Trump has also defended his father's decision to use money meant for charity to buy a football helmet signed by former Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow in 2012. As The Post had previously reported, Donald Trump supposedly won that helmet, and a Tebow jersey, at a charity auction, with a winning bid of $12,000.  But he later paid for those items with money from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity largely stocked with other people's money, not Trump’s. Tax records show no gifts from Donald Trump to his own foundation since 2008.

 

Tax experts have said that, if Trump kept that signed helmet for himself, he may have violated IRS rules against "self-dealing".  That’s a rule designed to keep a charity's officers from using a nonprofit group's money to help themselves.

 

Eric Trump said he wasn't sure what had become of the helmet, but he doubted his father kept it.

 

"Knowing him, he probably gave that helmet to a child," Eric Trump said. "Sometimes the only way to support a cause is by buying an item at this event. You don’t want that item! … I wouldn’t even be surprised if he never collected the helmet. It’s not about the helmet."

 

Eric Trump also did not provide any details about any of the other donations he said his father had given to charities run by people outside the Trump family.

"My father likes to keep some anonymity. It’s who he is. It’s who he is as a person," Eric Trump said.

 

So, when it comes to donations to charities, what’s missing from Donald Trump’s list of charitable giving: His own personal cash.

 

This may be fine for a narcissistic, real estate mogul, but for a politician, there needs to be a lot more transparency.  If Donald Trump actually did donate all those millions he talks about to veterans and the poor and the needy and the children, let’s just see some proof, that’s all!

 

Anyone can say they do these things, but if you’re asking for someone’s vote, you need to put up or shut up!

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016