“I wasn’t looking for the credit, but I had no choice but to do this because the press was saying I didn’t raise any money for them”, Trump said. Of the 26 groups that responded by Tuesday, half said they had received checks from Trump just last week. Trump made his $1 million donation last Monday evening, after a day of inquiries on Twitter – Trump’s preferred social-media platform – by the Washington Post.
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Trump raised millions during a splashy telethon-style fundraiser he held in Iowa in January in place of a Fox debate he was boycotting.
But his campaign refused for months to disclose which charities received the money.
Thus, he went off on the “dishonest” press and called ABC correspondent Tom Llamas a “sleazy guy”, saying: “You’re a sleaze because you know the facts, and you know the facts well”. Barack Obama has echoed Trump’s argument that the media tends only to report on the negative aspects of the news, albeit in a slightly more nuanced way. But then he told the assembled scribes, “I don’t think it’s anyone’s business if I send money to the veterans”.
“It was very unfair that the press treated us so badly”, Trump complained Tuesday. The largest contribution Trump listed was $1.1 million to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation.
Trump revised that figure recently to $5.5 million following months of questions from reporters struggling to track the funds and dodging on the exact amount from the Trump campaign.
“He’s bragged for months about raising $6 million for veterans and donating a million dollars himself”.
Donald Trump on Tuesday went on a sustained frontal assault against the media Tuesday during a contentious news conference.
But one supporter at Mr. Trump’s press conference urged journalists to put such considerations aside, and “focus on the real issues”, like the well-being of veterans themselves.
Trump said he didn’t “want the credit” for his fundraising, “but I shouldn’t be lambasted” – that despite Trump repeatedly touting the donations himself on the campaign trail since the January fundraiser, which was televised in what some at the time dubbed a PR stunt.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has a thin skin when it comes to perceived slights in the media, slammed the press for questioning his claim to have raised $6 million on one night in Iowa in February.
Trump’s remarks on the decades-old North Atlantic Treaty Organisation alliance of 28 nations will also elicit a response from Clinton, Sullivan said. Trump has a longstanding history with the group, which honored him at a gala a year ago, she said.
Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trump, told the AP that questions from The Post and other outlets did not push Trump to make the donations when he did. However, Trump hadn’t appeared shy about giving away poster-sized checks at campaign events in the weeks after the fundraiser.
“I, like so many people throughout the world, are horrified by what we see coming alive on our TVs as we see people fighting and disrupting”.
But one of the veterans who joined Trump for his news conference, Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire state representative, came outside to heckle the anti-Trump vets, calling them “political pawns”.
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In a typical presidential campaign, both parties have well funded, well staffed war rooms whose job it is to record everything the opponent says and hold that rival accountable, debunk claims about the candidate, and target certain audiences for campaign messages, said Mo Elleithee, who is executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service and a former communications director for the Democratic National Committee.
