At a time when people are seriously suggesting that opposing fascism makes you a fascist, we find ourselves constantly braced for all manner of bizarre, contradictory, or just plain wrongheaded news. But we were still surprised to learn that Trump, a man who’s declared the free press an enemy of the state (but not his low-rent state-run media page), now needs the help of the “fake news” to figure out how charity works.
Okay, so it’s actually not that astonishing to learn that Trump doesn’t even know where to begin being generous. But he did ask his mouthpiece, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to ask journalists to suss out where his $1 million pledge would be best utilized. (Hint: It’s probably not the American Red Cross.) According to CNBC, Huckabee Sanders boasted to reporters yesterday that Trump will donate “proudly $1 million of his own personal money to help the people of both Texas and Louisiana,” thereby continuing his tradition of offering up private support that’s a mere pittance towards the operating budgets of the departments whose funding he’s slashing.
But yeah, sure, Trump will totally donate just as soon as journalists tell him where to send that $1 million check, which we are sure won’t get lost in the mail (assuming the U.S. Post Office survives budget cuts). As CNBC reports, Huckabee Sanders said the president hadn’t “decided which organization he will donate to. The spokeswoman said Trump specifically told Sanders to ask journalists at the briefing for suggestions since they have been reporting on groups and their relief efforts.” So it looks like Trump will set aside his differences long enough to take advice from members of an institution he’s regularly threatened, whose advice he’ll almost certainly take and not perceive as some kind of scam. “Whoa, whoa, whoa—there’s a ‘United’ Way?”