Washington Gadfly

Report: Trump Gives Fake Jewelry As Expensive Gifts

REUTERS/David Becker

Evan Gahr Investigative Journalist
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If well-sourced reports that Donald Trump is paying Breitbart.com for favorable coverage are correct, they should take cold hard cash only. Don’t let Trump give you any fancy jewelry to show appreciation for taking his side when ex-aide Corey Lewandowski mauled one of your own reporters! Just stick to official campaign expenditures, like the $8,000 “policy consulting” fee that the Breitbart “national security editor” got last October.

In a lengthy New York Times hit piece about Trump’s long employ of Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s infamous counsel, the paper noted that Trump once gave Cohn a gift of “diamond-encrusted cuff links and buttons” in a fancy jeweler’s box. But after Cohn succumbed to AIDS his lover got the “jewels” appraised and learned they were fakes.

Now, the New York Post has compiled some other examples of alleged Trump chicanery, including one sourced to his own camp. The story, headlined “Trump has been giving out fake diamond cufflinks for years” tells how Charlie Sheen “recently called out The Donald for the ruse, saying Trump once gave him his own cuff links as a wedding present and boasted that they came from one of the city’s leading jewelers. ”

Sheen told an interviewer that an appraiser, upon almost instant examination of the cuff links for him, declared them fake. Of course, anything Sheen says should be taken with a grain of salt.

But the Post story also recounted another ruse courtesy of an inside Trump source. After Trump, “engaged in a fake ringside take-down of wrestling honcho Vince McMahon in 2007, he griped to the promoter that he lost one of his ‘Trump-stamped’ cuff links worth $50,000.”

“The source said the links were actually valued at less than $100.”

“But ‘that’s just Donald. It’s just very Donald,’ said the insider, who heard the mogul tell the story.”

Funny stuff, but the bi-partisan Donald Trump circle jerk should not pleasure themselves too much over these anecdotes. Trump might give fake jewelry but much of what he says is true and unnerving precisely because of its brutal honesty.