And now here’s,
as the late Paul Harvey was so fond of saying, “The rest of the story!” Trump’s claimed charitable contributions of
all sorts during the period 2008-2014 are significant, not because they represent
his own money, but because so very few of them do. Trump donates about 2400
rounds of golf, which as any golfer knows has very little intrinsic cash value.
He classifies all of them as “donations” at the highest, non-member, “on season”
rate. In addition he classifies all the Trump Foundation donations as “his,”
even though as voluminously documented elsewhere, almost none of the money the
foundation donates (and in fact, zero over the previous 8 years) is Trump’s
money, but represents contributions from the likes of WWW shill, entrepreneur and, inexplicably to
me, billionaire, Vince McMahon and his
wife Linda, who in one donation, eclipsed all the actual cash Trump has ever added
to his own foundation. Much of what these dollars have actually done are pay
for self-serving things such as portraits of “The Great Man (Trump himself),” Autographed
Tom Brady helmets, etc.”
Running the numbers shows that Trump, who characterizes George Clooney and many equally philanthropic industry members such as Spielberg, Streep, Seinfeld, McConaughey, Baldwin, Lucas, Freeman, (all of whose personal cash outlays to charity eclipse Trump’s!) as “Hollywood elite”, has actually contributed from his own cash, in the last 8 years, money equivalent to a total of a mere .04 percent of his self-proclaimed net worth.
By the same metric, George Clooney has contributed .5% of his own net worth, in cash, over the past 12 months! This amounts to Clooney giving 12 1/2 times as much of what he has, in 1/8th the time as Trump. In other words, George Clooney, from his own earnings, outspends Donald Trump in charitable giving by a factor of 15000% per year! In doing this, he also organizes, raises, and channels financial major gifts from numerous others in the entertainment industry. The canard that Far Rightists toss around, which generally is that many of those in the entertainment industry are (pick one: uninformed, aloof, unconcerned, too dumb to have opinions, etc.) seems to revolve around nothing quite so much as jealousy and ignorance, sprinkled liberally with disdain for any political point of view that would present the NRA as anything less than a humanitarian organization. Those of the Trumpist persuasion typically denigrate the value of the performing arts in general, until they need a photo op with a Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, or in the greatest vomit inducing performance in the Oval Office since Nixon was too drunk to answer the phone and talk to Maggie Thatcher, Kanye West and his “posse.”
In fact, people
like Clooney, who produce and direct as well as act, are far more hands-on
managers than Trump has ever been. They get along with unions, pay their bills
on time, and in a generally overlooked statistical reality, creative industries
led by Hollywood account for about $504 billion, or at least 3.2 percent of
U.S. goods and services. Those numbers are seven years old and are undoubtedly
significantly higher at present. Film and allied industries produced more
revenue and a significantly larger percentage of US GDP than US travel and
tourism. Trump might be expected to extoll such productivity, but as we all
know, most persons in those industries loathe the man and his Far-Right ideals.
And here we have the crux of the matter, don't we? It isn’t
that Trump doesn’t like actors and actresses (Stormy Daniels, anyone?) but that
this man, so desperate for approval, only likes those who provide ego stroking
on a cosmic level. Clooney and most of Hollywood’s finest just apparently failed
“Ass kissing sycophant 101.”
Bravo!
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