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" Donald Trump was in a tuxedo, standing next to his award: a statue of a palm tree, as tall as a toddler. It was 2010, and Trump was being honored by a charity - the Palm Beach Police Foundation - for his 'selfless support' of its cause. His support did not include any of his own money. "

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" You know how country music stars get an extra 10 years on their life when they go to Branson? Like you're washed up, and you go to Branson, then you can last another 10 years. That's what bashing the media does. "

David Fahrenthold

Know

Life

Media

" The perception a lot of folks have of the Clintons, even folks who are Democrats, see the Clintons as bending the rules. "

" I started covering Trump's charitable giving sort of by accident. "

" Marty Baron, 'The Post''s executive editor, stopped me in the elevator lobby late one debate night and suggested we look into the Trump Foundation specifically. I also became interested in researching Trump's broader history of charity. "

" So much about Trump is... mysterious and slippery. Everything in his business record, you had to ask him for the details. He made himself the only source. He would either not tell you, or he was often an unreliable narrator about his own life. "

" Trump called me a 'nasty guy' on the phone, and some of his surrogates called me 'obsessed' and biased on TV. "

" A lot of other wealthy people feel the responsibility to take some of the wealth they've been given and give back: to give a lot of money to a particular cancer charity or to a group researching some particular disease or their alma mater. We haven't really found anything like that with Trump. "

" The Trump campaign generally does not respond at all to my requests for information - either requests for broader data on Trump's charitable giving or narrow requests for information about specific subjects, like the $20,000 portrait of himself that Trump seems to have purchased with money from his charity. "

" Millions of people would give literally anything to get their kids into a school like Harvard, and millions more simple admire it as another, brighter world. "

" IRS rules generally prohibit acts of 'self-dealing,' in which a charity's leaders use the nonprofit group's money to buy things for themselves. "

" I am not going to argue about whether I am a nasty guy. "

" It wasn't until the second half of my first year that I realized you have to try to make friends and meet people at Harvard; the chances don't come to you. "

" There's two sides to Trump's character, at least his pre-presidential character. One was, 'I'm the richest man you could possibly imagine, I live the life of Scrooge McDuck.' The other side was, 'I need your money. Give me money.' "

" The point of my stories was not to defeat Trump. The point was to tell readers the facts about this man running for president. How reliable was he at keeping promises? How much moral responsibility did he feel to help those less fortunate than he? By the end of the election, I felt I'd done my job. "

" The expectation with family foundations is that if your name is on the foundation, unless you're dead, it's your money that's being given away. And even if you are dead, it was your money before. "

" Trump has a lot of contacts in the world of charity because he rents out ballrooms, hotel ballrooms, the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago to charities. Charities are often the ones that rent out these ballrooms for big events. "

" It's so hard to cover Trump. What Trump says, what he feels, what he thinks changes from day to day. "

David Fahrenthold

Changes

Says

" There are some things about Trump's foundation and charity that I really want to know. I worry there may not be enough time to figure it all out. "

" I personally can barely remember what I was like before I came to college, what made me happy or worried or confident. I don't remember what I expected in my future, except that 'President of the United States' was about halfway up the ladder. "

David Fahrenthold

College

Happy

" Trump and his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, have both been criticized during their campaigns for activities related to their foundations. "

" What's a good metaphor for a Harvard student? A talking, gold-plated pile of manure, wearing a fleece. "

" Don't focus on what Trump says. Focus on the results of his actions. Stay in your lane and focus on one particular area. "

" In five cases, the Trump Foundation told the IRS that it had given a gift to a charity whose leaders told 'The Post' that they had never received it. In two other cases, companies listed as donors to the Trump Foundation told 'The Post' that those listings were incorrect. "

" If someone shut down Twitter tomorrow, and Trump had to get started on some other platform, he'd never do it. And I think the whole country would be different. "

" Trump is somebody who sees the media as basically his main constituency. So much of his self-worth and his image and his view of what the presidency should be about is the media and how he is reflected in the media. "

" Once money goes into a charity, it is tax exempt, so that's a benefit you get. And in return, you have to use the assets of the charity to serve the public good. So if Trump is using this money basically to save his businesses, the money isn't helping people. That's a violation of the letter and the spirit of law. "

" I feel like I understand Trump's character better than the average person now, having seen all of these little interactions with charity. I wanted to keep doing something that's like that, and not just doing pure politics. So my piece of the Trump empire is the golf courses, Mar-a-Lago, and the winery. "

" If you're the president of a charity, you can't take the money out of the charity and use it to buy things for yourself. And you can't take the money out of the charity and use it to buy things for your business. "

" The Trump people make it extremely hard to figure out what's going on with their businesses, so we've done things like try to figure out all the people, the charities who rented out ballrooms and hotel rooms, all the NBA teams that stay at his hotels, people that pay him a lot of money and have other choices. "

" In the past, whistleblowers have had their desks moved to break rooms, broom closets, and basements. It's a clever punishment, good-government activists say, that exploits a gray area in the law. The whole thing can look minor on paper. They moved your office. So what? "