So Much For Trump’s Veterans’ Agenda


Connecting the dots of the latest revision in the Trump campaign’s miserly veteran charity agenda, I believe that Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Trump for president was the first wave in calculated series of events intended to boost Trumps veterans’ agenda solidifying his lead in the GOP polls ahead of the Iowa and New Hampshire.

The second wave of the agenda: Trump getting earned media for deciding to boycott the Fox debate –using debate moderator Megyn Kelly as a lightening rod for saying that he’s upset with Fox. Next he announced a rival event (the third wave of the agenda ) to push his veterans agenda In the fourth wave, Trump set up a website – donaldtrumpforvets.com, to solicit donations to “help” veterans. “Honor their valor,” the website states. “Donate now to help our Veterans.”

The website, which is nothing more than a single page with stock photos and a credit card donation form, claims that “100% of your donations will go directly to Veterans’ needs.” Problem: 100% of the money on the site goes directly to Donald Trump’s personal non-profit foundation, according to a disclosure at the bottom of the page: “The Donald J Trump Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization,” it reads. “An email confirmation with a summary of your donation will be sent to the email address provided above.”

There’s also a fake veterans group (which has a membership of 1, the non-veteran organizer Joel Arends). According to the Trump campaign press release, Trump’s special event was intended to benefit veterans’ organizations in Iowa. Trump did announce that he’d raised more than $5 million for veterans, including his own $1 million contribution.

Other candidates, usually quiet about fundraising for veterans’ events in particular, jumped in hoping to share the spotlight with Trump to get earned media  for a bounce in Iowa and New Hampshire. Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina pledged to offer to donate $1.5 million and $2 million respectively to veterans’ organizations if Trump will debate them. Historically, none of these candidates have addressed veterans’ issues in a meaningful way, such as with detailed and specific plans, programs and policies designed to serve veterans.

None of the candidates in this election cycle have made renewed efforts to help veterans. Why can’t these candidates make consistent contributions to veterans’ organizations privately and without preconditions that serve their political agendas?’

During the veterans’ event, Trump compared deportations of illegal immigrants to veterans saying veterans have not fared well under the Obama administration. The truth is, while the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has a lot of problems, including the veteran claims backlog; veterans have made some advances under the Obama administration.

In fact, during the Obama Administration, veteran homelessness has been reduced and in November, Virginia became the first state to end veteran homelessness statewide. The budget for veteran homelessness has increased from $400 million in 2009 to $1.5 billion in 2014.

In an effort to do damage control after the Track Palin fiasco, Trump had John Wayne Walding, a Green Beret who lost the lower part of a leg after being shot by a sniper in Afghanistan in 2008, voice his support. He told his personal story of injury and recovery to applause. “Never underestimate the magnitude of what ‘thank you’ means to veterans,” he said. This was the fifth wave of the agenda.

Trump’s supporters don’t seem to have the critical thinking it takes to realize the terrible, long term implications of a Trump presidency. They believe that he is speaking his mind but in reality, he is speaking their minds as he stokes their fears and their misplaced anger, using them to his advantage and for his agenda.

Trump is a narcissist and a sociopath who is playing a dangerous game with our country. Trump supporters are caught up in racism and religion. Apparently, they lack the intelligence to rationalize that they are the problem. The fact that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are representing the GOP is proof that we are going backward politically as a country.

I stand with other veterans who are skeptical about the intentions of politicians, –not just Trump who are organizing events, exploiting us to “raise money” to ‘benefit’ veterans organizations. Throughout this presidential campaign, all of the presidential candidates, Democrat and Republican alike have lame veterans agendas.   I and other veterans are not fooled by Donald Trump’s or any presidential candidate’s efforts to stay on top by bringing us into the final election debates.

VoteVets, the IAVA and other veterans’ organizations have actively dismissed the Trump agenda calling it a cheap political stunt exploiting veterans, especially because the Donald J Trump Foundation has been far from generous to veterans’ organizations over the years. As Emily Canal of Forbes reported last October:

“The Donald J. Trump Foundation has donated $5.5 million to 298 charities between 2009 and 2013 (the most recent year available). This according to the non-profit’s 990 tax forms from those years. Of that, only $57,000 has been donated to seven organizations that directly benefit military veterans or their families. Wounded Warriors was not among the organizations Trump’s foundation gave to in that time period.”

Veterans’ organizations say The Donald is MIA when it comes to helping veterans.

“Donald Trump is not a leader in veterans’ philanthropy, unless he’s donated a lot of money that nobody knows about,” Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), told the New York Times last summer. “We were founded in New York. We are headquartered in New York. I’ve been here 10 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever even seen Donald Trump.”

Rieckhoff, an Iraq war veteran, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday:


In an email to The Weekly Standard, Trump’s spokeswoman Hope Hicks said that:

“Mr. Trump has made significant financial and in kind contributions to many Veterans organizations, personally and not through the Donald J. Trump Foundation.”

Trump’s spokeswoman did not reply to an email asking if she could share an estimate of Trump’s personal donations to veterans’ organizations. For instance, the Trump Foundation’s $57,000 in donations to veterans groups from 2009 to 2013 amounted to far less than Trump’s donations to the Clinton Foundation.

“Trump is listed on the Clinton Foundation’s donor page as having given somewhere between $100,001 and $250,000.”

The Trump foundation’s 2014 donations to politically connected organizations easily outmatched donations to veterans groups. That year, the foundation gave $26,500 to the Anti-Defamation League, $25,000 to the American Spectator Foundation, and $100,000 to the Citizens United Foundation.


The Donald J. Trump Foundation also gave about $57,000 to the Susan G. Komen foundation in 2012, the same year that the breast cancer charity courted controversy over its subtantial donations to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the country. The foundation even provided a small donation the the ACLU, a left-wing civil liberties organization opposed to religious liberty.

The Smoking Gun has consistently documented Trump’s overall miserly giving for years. In 1999, the website called Trump “The .00013% Man,” referring to the percentage of his wealth that the foundation had donated. As a percentage of Trump’s overall net worth, the Donald J Trump Foundation’s contributions haven’t increased much in recent years.

So much for the Trump veterans’ agenda.

Featured image via Donkey Hotey