Going into Thursday night’s debate, the question was if Donald Trump would win the debate without even being there or if he was giving away a big opportunity to one of his competitors. He won. But about that mysterious veterans’ benefit he held instead. It definitely had that signature Donald Trump humility, with Trump declaring it to be “like the Academy Awards,” but really, it was more of a Trump rally refigured as a variety show:
For much of the hour Trump was present, he ceded the stage to others, bringing up a casino-magnate friend who’d donated to the charity effort; two candidates who’d come over from the undercard debate, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee; a pair of folksy veterans’ activists, who held the stage for half an hour; and the Stump for Trump sisters, Diamond and Silk, whose advocacy has made them minor celebrities on YouTube. Trump’s intermittent presence, combined with the time he spent listing the rich friends who’d contributed to the $6 million and counting he’d raised, made the evening feel like a sort of gonzo variety-show telethon.
But what about the money? Trump’s campaign later released a list of 22 veterans organizations it said would benefit from the fundraising haul. Two veterans groups the list notably did not include were the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and VoteVets, both of which called Trump out for using veterans to distract from his debate problems while not knowing about their issues or having policy proposals to help veterans. And that list of 22 organizations bears some watching—are they groups that actually follow through on their missions … and when and how fully will the $6 million Trump says he raised be distributed? The money is going through the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which has donated only $75,000 to veterans groups since 2010.
So it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of this story plays out. But in the mean time, Trump got himself the debate win he was looking for, without facing a single question from Megyn Kelly.