At a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration Wednesday at the White House, President Donald Trump repeated a variety of familiar boasts, but he seemed especially interested in talking about how impressive it is that he doesn’t accept his presidential salary.
“In my first term, I donated it and I don’t think I ever got a story about it,” Trump whined, adding, “But in my second term, I donated it, too.”
The comments came a day after Trump, while unveiling an artificial intelligence chatbot, similarly bragged, “I don’t take my salary. They think that no other president has ever served without receiving their salary.” (I’m not sure who “they” are, but Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy also donated their presidential salaries.)
Earlier this year in Georgia, the president pushed the same false line about American history, saying: “I’m the only schmuck. I get no credit for it. You know what, I get no credit for it. Nobody writes about it.” (In reality, lots of news outlets have written about it.)
As best as I can tell, Trump really does waive his presidential salary, but before anyone rushes to give him credit for his magnanimity, this is one of those claims that comes with important fine print.
The base annual salary for an American president is $400,000, none of which the Republican incumbent accepts. But — and this is the important part — Trump doesn’t need the $400,000 a year because he’s already profiting off the presidency.
As a candidate for the nation’s highest office, Trump vowed to reject “the politics of personal profit” and to stand up to those who have gone to the nation’s capital and “lined their pockets.” But as a president, Trump has practically sent his pants out to the tailors to get bigger pockets.
In the first year of his second term, the Republican pulled in at least $2.2 billion, including more than $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency-related income, according to his latest annual financial disclosure.
No other president in American history has ever seen such financial gains while in office, and as a recent analysis from The New York Times explained, “Mr. Trump’s profits are a haul once unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting American president. No modern Western leader has ever publicly disclosed such big windfalls while in office. The Trump family’s earnings, experts said, have moved him into an echelon of enrichment more associated with strongmen in Russia and Turkey.”
In other words, the next time he brags about forgoing his $400,000 salary, remember that he took home more than five times that amount just last year.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
The post When Trump boasts about donating his presidential salary, be sure to read the fine print appeared first on MS NOW.
