Donald Trump wants CNN to donate all advertising profits from next week’s GOP presidential debate to veterans’ groups.
In a letter to CNN president Jeff Zucker released Wednesday, Trump wrote: “You should view the second debate broadcast as a public service and not accept the massive profits that this airing will generate.” Instead, he said, “I believe all profits from this broadcast should go to various VETERANS groups, a list of which I will send to you in the near future.”
And in case anyone wasn’t clear on why CNN’s advertising revenue would be higher from this debate, Trump took a moment to take credit.
“While I refuse to brag,” he wrote, “and as you know very well, this tremendous increase in viewer interest and advertising is due 100% to ‘Donald J. Trump.’”
Trump writes that he takes issue with how “the veterans of our country, our finest people, have been treated horribly by our government and its ‘all talk and no action’ politicians. In fact, some would say they are treated like third class citizens — even worse, in many cases, than illegal immigrants.”
So Trump asks CNN to be the knight in shining armor and requests that Zucker “let me know what your decision is as soon as possible.”
The letter comes one day after the New York Times reported on an upcoming Trump biography in which the business mogul says he “always felt that I was in the military” because he attended an expensive military prep school in New York, and that he got “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”
And then there were Trump’s July comments about senator John McCain.
“He’s not a war hero,” Trump declared in Iowa. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
Here’s Trump’s letter in full. It’s a good read.