August 5, 2016 at 10:21 PM
In May, Scotland "Scotty" King had gone to see her grandson sing in an All County Chorus concert at the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, a concert venue in West Palm Beach, Fla.
She had a decent seat, about halfway back. And just as she sat down, someone in the row behind her tapped her on the shoulder.
You're sitting in the Donald Trump seat, the person said.
King looked. There, on a worn metal plaque, were the words "Donald J. Trump."
"Not an exciting story," King said, recounting her tale over email. "But we all got a chuckle out of it."
But, in fact, she had discovered something truly unusual: a monument to the charitable giving of the GOP nominee.
Now, we know of at least three things in the United States, which grateful charities have named in Trump's honor.
The first is a bench, in Central Park.
The second is a seat, in a community theater in New Jersey.
The third is...this other seat.
The seat King discovered in Florida is the result of a donation Trump made in 1989. At the time, the Kravis Center was just in the planning stages, and its leaders held a "name-a-seat" drive to raise funds for its construction. The cheapest could be named for a donation of $10,000, said Kravis spokeswoman Judy Mitchell.
Trump donated $10,000.
He gave the money from his Donald J. Trump Foundation, according to that foundation's tax records. Trump had set up this personal charity in the late 1980s, to give away the proceeds from his book, "The Art of the Deal."
Trump lives part of the time in the Palm Beach area, where he owns a golf course and the Mar-a-Lago Club.
Since that original 1989 gift, he's given one other donation from the Trump Foundation to the Kravis Center: a gift of $2,500 in 2008, which benefited the center's programs for children. By that time the Trump Foundation was filled largely with other donors' money, as Trump's own gifts dwindled. Trump has never given the Kravis Center cash directly from his own pocket.
For months now, The Washington Post has been trying to find evidence that Trump made good on promises to donate millions of dollars of his own money to charity. That search has been made more difficult, because Trump -- unlike all other major-party nominees for the last 40 years -- has not released his tax returns.
As a part of that effort, I've been been looking for things that charities named in Trump's honor.
Now, thanks to King's tip, my list has grown by 50 percent, from two to three.
The most prominent monument to Trump's giving doesn't involve a charity: it is Donald J. Trump State Park, located on land that Trump gave New York in 2006, after he struggled to get permission to build a golf course. The park is now largely disused and poorly maintained, but the terms of the gift require that large signs be maintained outside with Trump's name on them.
There is still a stark contrast between the huge monuments Trump has erected to his own business success -- casinos, office towers and hotels -- and the monuments others have built to honor Trump's generosity.
So far, the three of those I've found could all be unbolted and loaded into the back of the same U-Haul van, with room to spare.
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