(...) These promises seemed designed to reassure potential customers and voters and to reconcile two sides of Trump’s public persona. On one hand, Trump said he had so much money that he didn’t need more. But on the other hand, he was always selling something.

The explanation was that the money Trump was making wasn’t for him to keep.

“I am acting as an agent for charities,” Trump said in 1989 at the unveiling of Trump: The Game. In news accounts, he estimated the board game alone would bring in $20 million for charity.

Milton Bradley, which made the game, saw the need for such a promise firsthand. After the company released the game — a Monopoly-like board game with Trump branding — it didn’t sell.

“The game was just nailed to the shelf,” said George DiTomassi, who was president of Milton Bradley at the time. One problem, he said, was that customers were not told about Trump’s pledge to give proceeds to charity. “They felt perhaps this was going to be something that a millionaire would make some money on,” DiTomassi said.

The TV commercial for the product was changed. “Mr. Trump’s proceeds from Trump: The Game will be donated to charity,” a new voice-over said at the end.

It still didn’t work. The game tanked.

Still, Trump said he made $880,000 from it, and even more from “The Art of the Deal.” In 1987, the mogul started the Donald J. Trump Foundation to donate his royalties.

But the proceeds didn’t go straight to charity. They went straight into Trump’s bank account.

“Are you asking me whether or not I took the check . . . and endorsed it over to a charity?” Trump said on the witness stand in a 1991 New York state court case, brought by a man who accused him of stealing the idea for Trump: The Game. “Who would ever do that?”

Trump said he did eventually pass money to his foundation, which gave it away to charities. He said he had given away even more than he had earned.

But when Trump ran into financial troubles in the middle of 1990, records show that his giving to the foundation slowed — then stopped. In 1991, he gave no money to the foundation. If book and game royalties came in that year, Trump apparently found another use for them. (...)

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—The billionaire Donald J. Trump’s bid to become a born-again Christian failed over the weekend after Jesus Christ turned down his friend request, campaign officials have acknowledged.

Jesus, who has not generally been active on Facebook, made a rare appearance on the social network on Monday to announce His decision to ignore the presumptive Republican nominee’s request for a personal relationship with Him.

In a brief post, Jesus offered the following explanation: “Just everything.”

The turndown from Jesus Christ, the inspiration behind one of the world’s most prominent religions, caps what has been a tough month for the Trump campaign.

Privately, campaign staffers fretted that the candidate would pen a disparaging tweet about Jesus, which might alienate evangelical voters in key battleground states.

But, at a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump made no reference to Jesus, and instead touted endorsements he had received from Gary Busey, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Joe (the Plumber) Wurzelbacher.