Trump Falsely Claims He’s the Only President to Donate His Entire Salary

President Donald Trump stood in the East Room on Wednesday, Sept. 30, and told a Hispanic Heritage Month crowd something he has said before. He is the only president who ever gave his salary away. “I don’t get credit for anything. And I don’t really want credit,” he said. “And if I don’t say it, nobody else will.”

The boast does not hold up. The presidential salary now sits at $400,000 a year, with expense and travel money that can push the package higher. Trump allowed that people “think George Washington maybe” gave his pay away too. That is not quite right either.

He said the checks from his second term have gone toward White House renovations, which he called “White House preservation.” CNN reporter Daniel Dale has noted that the first paycheck of 2025 went to the White House Historical Association. When PEOPLE asked where the rest of the money has gone, the White House did not answer and pointed back to the president’s own remarks. Dale has also said the administration has not publicly shown that the full second term salary has been donated.

Trump then turned to other wealthy presidents and said they kept the money. “Surprisingly, because we’ve had wealthy presidents. FDR was wealthy. JFK was wealthy,” he told the room. Trump himself reported more than $2 billion in income in 2025.

John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover, who served just before Franklin Roosevelt, both gave their presidential pay away. The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum says Hoover’s salary from 1929 to 1933 was $75,000 a year. By the time Kennedy took office in 1961, the pay had risen to $100,000.

Hoover explained the choice years later, in a 1937 newspaper interview kept by the museum. “I made up my mind when I entered public life that I would not make it possible for anyone ever to say that I had sought public office for the money there was in it,” he said. He kept the salary in a separate account and sent it where he thought it would do the most good. Some of it topped up pay for staff he believed the government underpaid. Some of it went to charity.

Kennedy’s team pointed to Hoover when it announced that the new president, heir to a large New England fortune, would donate his salary to several charities. Wire services carried that announcement in 1962.

Washington is a different case. He turned down pay while leading the Continental Army, then accepted $25,000 a year once he became president, according to Politico and the Washington Library at Mount Vernon.

Trump has made the same claim outside the White House. In a February speech in Georgia he said that in the history of the country, no president had ever waived his salary. “I’m the only schmuck,” he told that crowd.