What Trump's giving to charity -- or lack thereof -- foreshadowed about his presidency

3. The president’s marketing strategy relies on promising big results — and he relies on the assumption that public promises will be kept.

During my research, I went back and catalogued Trump’s promises to donate money to charity. I was struck by how many he’d made: in all, Trump’s public pledges after 2001 totalled $8.5 million or more. Usually, Trump didn’t name which charity he planned to help, which made it hard to check whether he’d kept his word. I searched far and wide, and found little evidence he did. I also found at least one case where Trump had made a specific pledge to a specific charity – a $250,000 promise to a charity that helps Israeli soldiers and veterans – and didn’t pay up (Another unnamed person paid Trump’s pledge instead, the charity said.)

But Trump seemed to suffer little reputational damage. The media covered his promise, but — since Trump was just a reality-TV star, not a presidential candidate — they didn’t usually check on the follow-through. During the campaign, when The Washington Post pressed Trump to supply details of his giving, he refused.

“I give mostly to a lot of different groups,” Trump said in one interview.

“Can you give us any names?” asked The Post’s Drew Harwell in May.

“No, I don’t want to. No, I don’t want to,” Trump responded. “I’d like to keep it private.”