title:  Report: After Millions Promised, Trump Gave Barely More Than $1,000 A Year To Charity
text: While he s a lot wealthier, Donald Trump is no Paul Newman. Like Trump, Newman pledges that the proceeds from his signature food sales will go to charity. Trump promised that sales from Trump Vodka, Trump University and two books would go to charity. Unlike Trump, Newman makes good on his promise. In fact, the last time Trump gave to charity, it was 2008.If Trump stands by his promises, such donations should be occurring all the time. In the past 15 years, Trump has promised to donate earnings from a wide variety of his money-making enterprises:  The Apprentice.  Trump Vodka. Trump University. A book. Another book. If he honored all those pledges, Trump s gifts to charity would have topped $8.5 million.But in that time, public records show, Trump donated about $2.8 million   less than a third of the pledged figure   through a foundation set up to give his money away. And there is no evidence that Trump has given to his foundation lately: The last record of any gift from him to his foundation was in 2008.Source: Washington PostThe Washington Post has been on this story for a while, likely because amid claims that he gives millions of his personal funds to charity, Trump refuses to offer up any proof in the way of tax returns or anything else.All of this seems very strange for a man who has his own charitable foundation. While the foundation seemed to start off on the right foot, in later years, it resembles more of a way to collect money from other people than anything resembling generosity on the part of Trump.When he founded the Donald J. Trump Foundation in 1988, the mogul gave half a million dollars, and donated another million the next year. But throughout much of the 1990s, Trump contributed little to his foundation. And despite his vaunted personal wealth allegedly totaling in the billions, according to publicly available records, Trump personally contributed $5,093,512 to his foundation between 1988 and 2014. (During that same time period, an additional $7,072,645 was donated by outside individuals and organizations.) In seven of those years, Trump personally contributed nothing.Even in some cases where foundation records show Trump likely did follow through, the donations don t match the original lofty boasts. In 1989, for instance, Trump released  Trump: The Game,  a version of Monopoly. He bragged that the game would earn $20 million   and that he d give it all to AIDS and cerebral palsy research and toward helping the homelessness. Trump barely gave money to his foundation for most of the 1990s, however.Two years later, a lawsuit against Trump revealed that the game had earned him just $866,800 in royalties, with Trump speculating that the game was perhaps too complex to be a big seller. In that same lawsuit, Trump reportedly said he donated the full proceeds to his charitable foundation. He publicly said that total donations resulting from the game amounted to $1 million, an amount corroborated by public records.Source: BuzzfeedThat s just the tip of the iceberg. Buzzfeed documented numerous times when Trump promised money and never delivered.The Washington Post went even further and contacted 167 charities in search of those missing gifts promised over the last severn years. They found just one donation. It was somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 to the Police Athletic League of New York City. That was it. One charity, one paltry amount of money. It makes one wonder if he wants the presidency as a money laundering scheme.Featured image via Darren McCollester with Getty Images.