Did Trump Donate His Presidential Salary Again in 12/2018

During his 2016 presidential entrada, Republican candidate Donald Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, vowed that if elected he would forgo the $400,000 annual presidential bacon. So far as president Trump has stuck to that promise, handing over checks every three months for various projects overseen by different government departments.

In the first quarter of 2017, for example, President Trump donated $78,333 (his $100,000 salary for that quarter, after taxes) to the Department of the Interior, specifically for the National Park Service's maintenance of an celebrated Civil War site. His contribution was put towards two projects at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland.

In July 2017, the White House appear in a printing release that President Trump had donated his second-quarter salary to a science, technology, applied science, and math (STEM) camp for children, overseen by the Education Department. He signed over his tertiary-quarter salary to the Section of Health and Human Services for a public awareness campaign about opioid addiction, and the concluding of his 2017 salary went towards an infrastructure grant programme overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

As the Washington Post has pointed out, some of the initiatives President Trump donated to were at uncertain stages of development or did not yet exist at the time he made his contribution, which prompted some additional scrutiny, only President Trump has all the same stayed true to his word and handed over a bank check representing his presidential salary every iii months.

Trump continued this tradition in 2018, donating his first-quarter bacon to the Department of Veterans Affairs, a sum which so-Acting VA Secretarial assistant Robert Wilkie said had been earmarked for "caregiver support in the form of mental health and peer back up programs, fiscal aid, instruction grooming, and inquiry." The president donated some other quarter's salary to the U.S. Small Business Administration for the purpose of establishing an "Emerging Leaders" plan focused "on helping veterans start small businesses after military life." And the third quarter of his 2018 bacon went to the National Plant on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, co-ordinate to the Associated Press. On xviii March 2019, Trump announced on Twitter he was donating a quarter of his salary to the Department of Homeland Security. On 26 November 2019, Trump announced he was donating again, this fourth dimension to the Office of the Banana Secretarial assistant of Health in social club to assist battle the nation's opioid crisis.

'Military Cemeteries'

In late July and early August 2018, scattered social media posts and memes claimed that the president had donated his unabridged $400,000 salary to the Section of the Interior, for the purpose of rebuilding war machine cemeteries. Many of these posts criticized the news media for not having reported on this purported donation. On 31 July 2018, for example, conservative radio host Marking Simone wrote, in a tweet that has since been deleted:

White House sent their spending written report to Congress. This was in it: "Instead of taking his bacon, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Section of the Interior where it will be used for structure and repair needs at military cemeteries!" Media gave this no coverage.

Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative activist and founder of the Turning Point United states organization, followed suit:

News the media didn't report today:

Today @realDonaldTrump donated his $400,000 salary to rebuilding military cemeteries
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) Baronial 1, 2018

1 Facebook user garnered almost 150,000 shares within three days for a 31 July post which fabricated similar claims:

And on two August, "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" posted a widely-shared meme on Facebook, which was about identical to Charlie Kirk'southward tweet:

These social media posts were accompanied by articles published past diverse right-wing web sites including the Gateway Pundit, the Right Scoop, and the viral content web site Social News Daily.

Analysis

At that place were two immediate issues with this set of claims. Starting time, President Trump could non possibly donate his entire $400,000 almanac salary for 2018 for the purpose of rebuilding armed forces cemeteries, because he has already donated the offset quarter's worth of that salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs for an entirely divide initiative. Then he simply had iii-quarters of his salary left to distribute, a mathematical fact that undermines the credibility of these claims.

Second, the social media posts and articles making this claim were very thinly sourced, to say the least. Neither the viral Facebook post nor meme that we highlighted above cited whatsoever source, and the three news articles we mentioned all relied on the two tweets from Charlie Kirk and Mark Simone.

Kirk's tweet cited no source whatsoever. Simone claimed that the data came from a White House "spending written report" sent to Congress, which he asserted contained the post-obit statement: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it volition be used for construction and repair needs at armed forces cemeteries!"

Simone did not include a link to that report in his tweet, and neither he nor Kirk responded to our requests for clarification or documentation.

The White House did send a somewhat related report to Congress a month earlier these claims emerged online. The White House Function's Annual Study to Congress on White Firm Personnel lists the names, titles and salaries of White Firm employees, and the 2018 written report, published on 29 June, made no mention of President Trump's salary, nor his donations from that salary.

Furthermore, nosotros did not find the quotation that Simone included in his tweet in any official White Business firm certificate or study to Congress. We did, however, find it in several online postings from the summer of 2017. Equally posted to the spider web site MyCrazyEmail.net on 25 July 2017, the message typically read equally follows:

The Trump assistants released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position championship of all 377 White House employees. The written report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary, instead he donated it to an amazing cause.

… It's what the report said Trump did with this bacon that has everyone talking!

Instead of taking his bacon, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it volition be used for construction and repair needs at armed services cemeteries! Amazing! Information technology's and so great to have a President who loves our brave military machine men and women then much! Oh, and where's the media coverage of this? Oh that'southward correct, they don't comprehend annihilation good that the President does.

So the claim that Trump donated his unabridged $400,000 annual salary for rebuilding military cemeteries actually comes from online rumors posted in 2017. This means the vast bulk of claims fabricated in July and August 2018 are false on this basis alone, since they stated that Trump's donation had happened "today."

However, the claim was equally fake in 2017 as it was in 2018. As we outlined at the beginning of this article, President Trump distributed his 2017 salary in iv carve up chunks, to four separate projects, none of which involved armed services cemeteries. The White Firm had already announced ii of those donations by 26 July 2017, so the viral rumor was demonstrably simulated even as information technology first emerged online, twelve months earlier Mark Simone and Charlie Kirk'south viral tweets.

The 2017 rumor, which was the source of Simone's tweet, claimed that the 2017 White House Office Personnel study had described President Trump'south intention to donate his whole salary for repairs on armed services cemeteries. That official written report, which can exist viewed here, did not mention the president'due south salary, his donations from that salary, nor cemeteries of any kind.

The original source of this flurry of inaccurate rumors appears to have been a 2 July 2017 article in Forbes mag, about that twelvemonth's White House Office Personnel report. The rumor which spread online later that summertime plagiarized whole sections of the article, indicating that the Forbes piece provided a template for subsequent distortions and falsehoods — specially the section that read equally follows:

While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to forego his paycheck. Notwithstanding, Article II of the United States Constitution mandates a presidential salary. In the kickoff quarter, President Trump donated his pay to the Dept. of Interior for construction and repair needs at war machine cemeteries.

The president did donate his start-quarter 2017 salary to the Department of the Interior, but not for the reconstruction of military cemeteries. This inaccuracy was and so compounded in the subsequent online rumor, which took Forbes' accurate description of the donation every bit being "in the first quarter," and only replaced it with "all $400,000" (i.due east., the entire yearly salary).

According to a Department of the Interior press release, President Trump's $78,333 donation formed part of a larger $263,545 fund which was used by the National Park Service to make repairs at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, site of the Civil War Battle of Antietam (or the Boxing of Sharpsburg, as it was commonly known in the South).

A press release described the project in detail:

The donation will restore the historic Newcomer House on the Antietam battlefield, and will underwrite the replacement of 5,000 linear feet of deteriorated runway fencing along the Hagerstown Turnpike where some of the most intense fighting of the battle occurred.

There is a cemetery at Antietam National Battlefield, simply President Trump'south donation had nothing to do with it.

Decision

The claim that President Donald Trump decided either in 2017 or 2018 to donate his entire $400,000 bacon to the reconstruction of military cemeteries, and that a blinkered, biased news media refused to report this, is false.

Each of President Trump'southward actual salary donations (executed in quarterly disbursements, non one time a year) has been reported past major news media, including some of the nation'south biggest and most widely-read news outlets.

The news media has non reported on the president's donation of his unabridged $400,000 annual bacon for the reconstruction of military machine cemeteries due to the plainest reason of all: because it hasn't happened.

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Source: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-salary-military-cemeteries/

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