The Slatest

Spicer Says Trump Was Totally Just Getting Around to Fulfilling Promise to Donate Salary

Sean Spicer during a briefing at the White House on Friday.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Over the weekend, NBC noted that, nearly two months into his term, Donald Trump had evidently not yet followed through on a November promise to donate his presidential salary to charity.

Well, wouldn’t you know that White House press secretary Sean Spicer announced at Monday’s daily briefing that Trump in fact already has a very real plan, which definitely exists, to do so:

Spicer said that Trump’s intention was to donate his salary at the end of the year, and added an extra surprise for the press corps.

“The president’s intention right now is to donate his salary at the end of the year and he has kindly asked that you should all help him determine where that goes,” he said.

Fortunately this means that we do not have to add salary donation to Donald Trump’s Big Scrapbook of Unfulfilled Promises, which is currently full-to-bulging with documentation related to his promise to sue the New York Times, his promise to sue the many women who have accused him of sexual assault, his promise to release his tax returns, his many promises over the years to donate various personal profits to charity, his promises to use the money that others donated to his foundation for actual charitable purposes rather than for buying tacky portraits of himself, his promises to pay Trump Organization contractors, his promise to make Mexico pay for a wall on the border, his promise to prosecute Hillary Clinton, his promise to put his businesses in a “blind trust” while he serves as president, his promise to investigate the 3 million to 5 million illegal votes he says were cast in 2016, his promise to dismantle the Iran nuclear deal, his promise to “crush” ISIS via a “foolproof” secret plan, his promise to release a health care plan that increases coverage while reducing premiums, and his promise to release evidence that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii.

Spicer did not use Monday’s press conference to address NBC’s observation that Trump has also apparently failed to follow through on his claim, made at a grandiose January press conference, that Trump hotels would donate profits from diplomatic business to the U.S. treasury during his term. We might have to get the scrapbook back out.