(Newswire.net — March 14, 2017) —During the presidential campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump said that he intends to donate his annual salary amounting to $400,000 to charity.
He told the crowd at a rally in Rochester, New Hampshire: ”The first thing I’m going to do is tell you that if I’m elected president, I’m accepting no salary, okay? That’s not a big deal for me.”
He has now confirmed that he will give the money at the end of the year, but he kindly asked journalists for help in deciding on where it should go.
Trump’s first paycheck should have come on February 20, a month after the inauguration, and the next one should be expected on March 20.
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said to the reporters that the president will donate his presidential salary at the end of the year, but the President would “really like to have their help” in identifying a worthy cause where the money should go.
“The way that we can avoid scrutiny is to let the press corps decide,” said Sean Spicer.
When a reporter at the White House daily press briefing suggested the money goes towards journalism scholarships, Mr. Spicer replied, “That’d be a great way to do it”, reports the Washington Times.
Federal law dictates that the U. S. President must receive an annual compensation of $400,000, a sum which is to be paid on a monthly basis in the form of a salary of $33,333. But Trump told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl in November: “I’m not going to take the salary. I think I have to by law take $1, so I’ll take $1 a year.”
During the presidential campaign, journalists criticized Donald Trump after they discovered that he gave very little funds to charities during the course of his career.
If President Trump truly donated his salary to charity, he wouldn’t be the first one to do so. Trump would become only the third U.S. president to have donated his salary.
His predecessors, John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover, who were both extremely wealthy, parted ways with their earnings.
President Barack Obama also agreed to return a small sliver of his salary to the Treasury in the wake of the 2013 government shutdown, as to show solidarity with federal workers.