President Donald Trump is planning to donate to charity in lieu of gifts for the upcoming royal wedding that he wasn’t invited to.
A White House spokeswoman said Thursday that the president and first lady Melania Trump would be giving to one of seven charities that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle designated for their nuptials on Saturday, multiple outlets reported.
The spokeswoman did not specify which of the seven charities the two would be donating to, or the amount of money they plan to contribute.
But the words “Trump” and “charitable” are not exactly synonymous. The president has time and again made promises of giving money to good causes without ever following through.
In 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer reviewed hundreds of pages of records to find that Trump and his charity hadn’t donated a single cent to a major 9/11 charity. Maybe that wouldn’t have been such a big deal if Trump hadn’t previously boasted about giving $10,000 to the fund.
And in a monthslong investigation, The Washington Post called more than 400 charities with connections to Trump only to find a single personal donation from him between 2008 and 2016.
His own self-described charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, shut down last year after it was found to have violated federal rules on “self-dealing.” The foundation was wracked with claims it was functioning as a political slush fund, and at one point Trump reportedly spent $20,000 of the “charitable” money on a 6-foot-tall portrait.
The portrait was of himself.