Lucylastic
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Last week, Donald Trump toured areas of Louisiana that had been devastated by flooding. During his visit, news outlets reported that he had made at least two donations to flood-relief efforts there. Since then, The Washington Post — which has been covering Trump's past promises to donate to charity — has tried to confirm these reports.
Here's what we've learned so far.
1.) Trump promised a $100,000 donation to Greenwell Springs Baptist Church, which lies to the northeast of Baton Rouge, in a zone affected by floods. Trump had visited the church on Friday and helped hand out supplies for a few moments as cameras rolled.
That church's interim pastor is Anthony Perkins, who is also president of the Family Research Council — a powerful and politically active Christian conservative group that condemns abortion, homosexuality and what it calls "transgenderism." In recent days, the Baptist church has organized volunteers to help clean out flood-damaged homes and has offered hot meals and supplies to those affected.
Perkins said Tuesday that Trump's gift had not yet been paid.
"I've been told the church should [receive] it on Friday," he wrote in an email to The Post. Perkins said he was unsure whether Trump planned to make the donation out of his own pocket, or perhaps from the Donald J. Trump Foundation — a nonprofit group that is largely filled with other donors' money, not Trump's own.
Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trump's presidential campaign, did not respond to questions about this promise.
2.) Trump has also been credited — by CNN, and by his campaign's Louisiana state director — with donating a truckload of supplies that arrived in the flood-ravaged town of St. Amant, La. But so far The Post has been unable to confirm the details of that account.
"This 18-wheeler, we're told by officials, donated by Donald Trump," CNN's Rosa Flores said on-air on Friday, as a forklift unloaded pallets of supplies from a truck in the background. The tractor-trailer was parked at The Church in St. Amant, near a command post for the regional authorities which Trump visited. She interviewed one of the church's pastors about how badly the supplies inside were needed. This was a different truck, apparently, than the one from which Trump was videotaped handing out supplies.
The Post sought to verify that Trump had donated the truck, asking Trump's campaign and local officials about the gift.
Hicks, the campaign spokeswoman, did not respond to queries.
Ryan Lambert, who is Trump's state director in Louisiana, wrote The Post a one-line email: "Mr. Trump donated the truckload of supplies." He did not immediately respond to questions about how he knew that, or about how Trump had arranged for the donation.
But Mark Stermer, the senior pastor of the church that received the supplies, said that he met with Trump personally on the day the truck arrived — and the GOP candidate did not mention anything about donating the supplies. "I was where Trump was the whole time, and he didn’t say one way or the other," Stermer said.
Stermer was unsure how he had first heard the account that Trump was responsible for the truck.
"I really don’t remember," how people came to believe that the truck had been donated by Trump. "It was just an assumption."
Stermer said that, in the accounts he heard, it was possible that Trump had caused the truck to be given — perhaps by inspiring another donor to give.
"I was never told he donated [the truck]. I was just told that, 'Hey, this truck was the truck that was coming with Trump.' So I never heard it [as] 'donated,'" Stermer said. He said the relief effort has been busy, and left little time to account for the specifics of who gave what: "Man, it’s so chaotic over there, we were just getting trucks in and out."
A spokesman for Ascension Parish, where St. Amant is located, said, "We don’t have any information about a donation truck that came from [Trump] directly."
A spokeswoman for the parish's sheriff's office said that she had been told a truck came from Trump, but she hadn't seen it herself. "We do know that Trump brought a trailer but no one knows the details of that or what was in it," spokeswoman Allison B. Hudson wrote.
The Post is continuing to seek more details about this truck and its connection to Trump.
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3.) It is unclear whether Trump gave a donation to the charity recommended by the governor of Louisiana prior to his visit.
Before Trump arrived in Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) suggested that he give a "sizable donation" to the Louisiana Flood Relief Fund, run by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.
Did he? The foundation declined to comment.
The governor's office said it did not know.
Hicks, Trump's campaign spokeswoman, declined to comment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/23/did-donald-trump-make-donations-for-flood-relief-in-louisiana-heres-what-we-know/
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