I could spend the rest of my life reading off the ever-growing list of reasons that Donald Trump is a very bad man. But few things sum up who he is like the latest of his shallow publicity stunts, which saw him donating his $100,000 second-quarter presidential paycheck to the Department of Education. That he did this while proposing to cut a whopping 13.5 percent, or $9.2 billion from the DOE budget—perfectly illustrates how Trump's badness works.

When the former host of The Apprentice became president, he made a big hullabaloo about how since he is such a rich and giving man, he will not accept a salary and bravely donate the money to various federal agencies. (His first-quarter paycheck went to the National Parks Service.) On its surface, this is a fairly common type move for the wealthy and powerful to do—an organization gets a little bit of cash, the rich benefactor gets the warm glow of good PR. But Trump is no longer an average rich person. He is the president, meaning that everything he does is supposed to be "public service."

The giveaway suggests that Trump, who has been profiting off the presidency because he hasn't divested from his business, understands the Department of Education as a charity, rather than part of the government that he runs. And while it also indicates he is aware that schools are in need of money, that just makes you wonder why he is so eager to cut the DOE in the first place.

Trump's proposed DOE budget stands to hit low-income high school graduates especially hard—slashing $166 million in state grants for career and technical education, reducing the budget for federal work-study by a whopping 50 percent, eliminating the Corporation for National and Community Service, which includes the AmeriCorps program, and doing away with federally subsidized loans.

This isn't the first time Trump has made a phony charitable donation. During the presidential campaign, it was revealed that his giving was far, far less than what he said it was. Although he's boasted about giving away $102 million over the past five years, the Washington Post found that "not a single one of those donations was actually a personal gift of Trump's own money."

The proposed cuts and the $100,000 publicity stunt that follow that pattern. The Trump brand—which is, more than real estate, what he's become rich from selling—is based on the perception of Trump being a genius businessman. So it's natural that every success, no matter how small, every generous act, is trumpeted and amplified while every failure and disappointed and small-minded act of cruelty is hidden. Just after the election, Trump celebrated his personal intervention that "saved" the jobs of factory workers in Indiana. Less attention has been paid by the White House to the hundreds of employees at the plant who did lose their jobs.

Trump's "charitable" donation of his paycheck to the Department of Education stems from the same impulse. More than wanting to help people, he wants everyone to know he's helping people. Mainly, he wants to help himself. I guess we already knew that. But the way he brands himself is constantly at odds with who he actually is—a volatile narcissist who wants everyone to like him without actually doing anything to warrant the praise he so desperately desires.