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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.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...ory.html?postshare=1591477767717547&tid=ss_twIn 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.