Candidates spar over Trump, Clinton foundations at VP debate
Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Mike Pence, and his Democratic opponent, Sen. Tim Kaine, laid out dueling descriptions of the charitable foundations run by the candidates at the top of each of their tickets.
Notably, the exchange happened while they ostensibly answered a question about North Korea.
To Pence, the Clinton Foundation is a recipient of “millions of dollars from foreign governments and foreign donors,” which then engaged in “pay to play politics.” That foundation, he said, spends only 10 percent of all money collected on charity (This claim is disputed by most fact-checking organizations.)
To Kaine, that same charity “is one of the highest-rated charities in the world,” one he said provides “AIDS drugs to about 11.5 million people, … helps Americans deal with opioid overdoses, … gets higher rankings for its charity than the American Red Cross does.” It spends 90 cents of every dollar on charity, he said. (This claim is supported by most fact-checking organizations.)
When the conversation moved to the Trump Foundation, their views were equally divergent.
Pence described that foundation as “a private family foundation” which “gave virtually every cent to charitable causes.” Kaine, in turn, charged that “the Trump Foundation was just fined for illegally contributing foundation dollars to the political campaign of an attorney general” who was investigating Trump University.
Then, after nearly 90 minutes in which Kaine repeatedly called for Trump to release his tax returns, Pence came back with a similar tactic. More might be learned about Clinton’s relationship with her foundation, he said, “if Hillary Clinton would just turn over the 33,000 emails” that have been erased from her private server.
