Trump Did Make A Charitable Donation — To Jenny McCarthy’s Anti-Vax Org

For someone who calls himself an "ardent philanthropist," Donald Trump has made surprisingly few donations. After contacting 300 charities, The Washington Post could only identify one gift he made out of pocket from 2008 through this May, which was to the Police Athletic League of New York. (In May, he donated $1 million to the Marine Corps — Law Enforcement Foundation after falsely claiming he already had.) But The Daily Beast recently discovered one other cause Trump has recently supported. The Trump Foundation donated $10,000 to Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccination organization, in 2010. McCarthy, a Playboy model and former The View host, has long been on a crusade to end vaccines, using her son as evidence that they cause autism. Her organization spreads warnings about vaccination and aims to help families get "autism treatment." (She claims that, after following a specific diet and taking vitamins, her own son is no longer autistic.) Donald Trump has also expressed anti-vaccination sympathies. During CNN's Republican debate last September, he lamented a boy who "went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic."

In 2014, he tweeted, "Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes — AUTISM. Many such cases!"

Another tweet of his reads, "I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children and their future."

In reality, vaccines don't have a proven link to autism, and even if they did, being autistic isn't a bad thing. But vaccines do save hundreds of thousands of lives. So, it looks like Trump has indeed donated to charity. But whether he has helped the world by doing so is certainly up for debate.