Every time Donald Trump boasts of his own generosity or how he’s helped people, it’s worth the effort to take a peek behind the curtain to determine if he’s telling the truth. As I pointed out in an earlier piece about the media, they are now doing the kind of detailed hard work they should have been doing prior to Trump winning the GOP nomination.

The Washington Post has dug into the Trump Foundation and found — surprise! — it does not operate similarly to other private foundations. Private foundations get the bulk of their money from the individual who owns it, the family or the corporation tied to it. The Ford Foundation is a perfect example.

The Trump Foundation? Trump hasn’t given his own foundation any money since 2008. 

The Post story is fascinating. Here are just some bullet points of what they found:

• Trump uses the foundation as a pass through mechanism. He collects donations to the foundation and then turns around and writes checks to organizations as if the money came from him.
• Trump’s last donation to his own foundation was in 2008 for $30,000. Since that time however, he has continue to collect donations and disburse the money in his name.
• Trump spent $20,000 that was earmarked for charity on a six foot tall painting. Of himself.

One of the worst things is the number of organizations who supposedly have been beneficiaries of Trump Foundation money who claim they’ve never received a check. Look at this (click for full size):

Sooner or later, the IRS is going to go poking around. Granted, Trump doesn’t have nearly the amount of power the Clintons do which makes their foundation shenanigans that much worse. But still. This is just tawdry and goes to show that Trump only does things for the benefit of himself. He couldn’t care less about others.