As if it weren't enough that Donald Trump is claiming -- with no evidence -- to have given away millions of dollars of his personal money, Gov. Chris Christie is now parroting the same line, and also refusing to back it up.



The governor said on talk radio last week that Trump had given away "tens of millions of dollars" of his own money, but Christie's office refused to respond to a follow-up request asking what donations he was referring to.



Here's all the evidence we have about Trump's charitable giving, thanks to an exhaustive investigation by the Washington Post: Aside from one donation he made of between $5,000 and $9,999 in late 2008, and $1 million he recently gave to veterans only after intense hounding from the press, there is zero.

Why New York has launched probe of Trump charity



That's not even the worst of it. Trump also used hundreds of thousands of dollars of other people's charitable money for selfish and illegal purposes: to help pay off his legal bills, buy a giant painting of his own face, make a well-timed donation to an Attorney General who was about to investigate fraud at his university, pay off his televised promises to contribute his "personal" money and stay in the good graces of charities that pay big to rent his event spaces.



Trump's foundation was such a scam that philanthropy experts say it can't even be considered a charity. You're not allowed to use a nonprofit charity for your private interests - that's called "self-dealing." And the Trump foundation took it to a new level.



"I don't recall ever seeing a pattern of self-dealing that encompasses so many different kinds of self-dealing," the former director of the I.R.S.'s tax-exempt organizations division, Marc Owens, marveled in the New York Times.

The Clinton Foundation has been criticized because some bigwigs donated to get a meeting with the Clintons, but it's an actual charity that does good work, like fighting HIV and AIDS worldwide -- not an illegal money laundering operation.



Besides the financial chicanery, there is also the issue of character. Trump ranks among the least charitable billionaires in the world, and seems to have very little real interest in helping others. Yet Christie continues to defend his generosity.



"You're not going to want people to be talking about the Clinton Foundation and comparing it to anything Donald Trump has done in his life, including giving away tens of millions of dollars of his own personal money," Christie said.



Actually, that's exactly what we want to talk about, governor. What money?

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