Donald Trump spent years trying to kick veterans off Fifth Avenue

(The site was also cobbled together this week; the domain name was purchased Thursday.) Your donation, should you add to the “over $130,000 raised today” that the site trumpeted as of this writing, will go to something called the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has been around since 1988.

Trump hadn’t let up in 2004, either, when he wrote the mayor to say, “Whether they are veterans or not, [the vendors] should not be allowed to sell on this most important and prestigious shopping street…”

Ultimately, Trump’s press secretary Hope Hicks said Thursday afternoon, ‘the money will go to a number of Veterans charities and organizations’. “To use wounded warriors and their true battle scars to his political advantage, I would say this to Katrina: I’m not dumb enough to buy that this is about the veterans, because Donald Trump has never held an event for the veterans on his campaign”.

Trump’s involvement with veterans has been rocky.

CNN political commentator Ben Ferguson locked horns with Trump’s national spokeswoman Katerina Pierson Thursday over the Republican presidential candidate’s decision to pull out of the Fox News debate and host his own event to support veterans.

Trump announced Tuesday that he would no longer participate in Thursday night’s Republican debate on Fox News, saying the network, and Fox host Megyn Kelly in particular, had mistreated his campaign.

At the kickoff of Trump’s rally Thursday, the billionaire businessman said he had raised almost $6 million, including $500,000 through its website in one day. Paul Riekhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), is speaking out and accusing Trump of using veterans to play politics. We need strong policies from candidates, not to be used for political stunts’.

Trump’s camp fired back immediately. telling DailyMail.com that he had personally ‘donated close to half a million dollars to organizations as a result of the 9/11 tragedy including the American Red Cross and the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Fund, in addition to a total of $102 million dollars donated to hundreds of charitable foundations over a relatively short period of time, many of which helped people affected by 9/11’.

Questions have swirled around the fundraiser, set for Des Moines’ Drake University: Which, if any, veterans groups have been involved?

Above and beyond his giving priorities, Trump himself has a less than admirable record on veterans’ issues. “Just donate directly to groups doing good work”. “I’ve been here 10 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever even seen Donald Trump“. John McCain, the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam war: “He’s not a war hero”.