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Donald Trump to Hold News Conference on Veterans’ Issues Donald Trump Lashes Out at Media While Detailing Gifts to Veterans
(about 5 hours later)
Donald J. Trump will hold a news conference at Trump Tower in New York on Tuesday, where he is expected to talk about the money he pledged to donate to veterans’ groups after he skipped a debate in January before the Iowa caucuses. A defensive Donald J. Trump angrily listed more than two dozen veterans’ groups that he said had received $5.6 million thanks to his fund-raising and personal largess during a contentious news conference Tuesday in which he repeatedly railed against reporters who questioned him.
Last week, The Washington Post reported that Mr. Trump said he had donated $1 million of the $6 million he helped raise at the nationally broadcast fund-raiser he attended instead of the debate. However, he did not make the donation until a few days ago, when he was under intense scrutiny by the news media. Criticizing the news media at length, Mr. Trump demanded that journalists credit him for his act of charity and took umbrage at their scrutiny of his boasts and promises.
Mr. Trump may also use the news conference to discuss his continuing criticism of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Obama administration has been condemned for long waits at hospitals run by the department, and the Veterans Affairs secretary, Robert A. McDonald, was roundly criticized last week for comparing the long lines veterans face to get medical attention to the wait times for Disneyland rides. In a heated, 40-minute appearance in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, Mr. Trump dismissed a CNN reporter as “a real beauty” and an ABC reporter as “a sleaze,” and said that if he was elected president, the American public could expect a similar dynamic in the White House briefing room.
Democrats do not plan to let Mr. Trump command the sole stage on Tuesday: They will hold a news conference featuring veterans outside Trump Tower just before noon. “Yes, it is,” he said. “It is going to be like this.”
Mr. Trump used his favorite medium, Twitter, to post some thoughts on Memorial Day. His tweets ranged from touching on patriotism to denouncing the federal judge overseeing a case involving Trump University. Mr. Trump attributed the holdup in gifts — which he announced in January — to a need to scrutinize the charities beforehand — though the recipient of his largest donation is well-known to him. And he expressed a newfound bashfulness about his donations, saying that he “didn’t want to have credit” for them — though he had promised the donations in a speech carried live on national television.
Over the weekend, he also posted about the Republican Party, and he criticized a potential independent run by an unknown candidate. Despite being the party’s standard-bearer, he referred to Republicans as “they” instead of “us,” a reminder that, while he is using the party’s label, he is unlikely to own it. The controversy stemmed from an event Mr. Trump staged in late January as an alternative to the final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses, which he skipped. In a televised fund-raiser that he said would benefit military veterans, he announced he had raised more than $6 million and that he himself was giving $1 million.
But those gifts did not materialize quickly, and The Washington Post reported a week ago that Mr. Trump still had yet to make his own donation.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump arrived prepared with a list of groups — complete with exact dollar amounts — to which he said he had donated. Campaign aides and security guards applauded Mr. Trump.
The largest gift, he said, was $1 million to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, and he held up a copy of a check to back up his assertion. (The group’s vice chairman, Gary Schweikert, is the managing director of the Trump SoHo hotel.)
Demanding that the news media praise him for his generosity, Mr. Trump complained that military veterans were calling him in outrage rather than in gratitude.
“The press should be ashamed of themselves,” Mr. Trump said. “You make me look very bad.”
Outside Trump Tower, Perry O’Brien, a veteran from Brooklyn who said he had served in Afghanistan until 2003, protested Mr. Trump as part of a group calling itself Vets Vs. Hate.
“Veterans are not for sale, and we’re not interesting in making a deal when it comes to him demeaning veterans, demeaning P.O.W.s,” said Mr. O’Brien, who said he was a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders.