“I don’t get credit for anything. And I don’t really want credit,” Trump told the audience at a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/donald-trump-john-f-kennedy-jr-070326-e6f97082d6174793aa3e07d42d838def.jpg "US President Donald Trump arrives to speak during a Rose Garden Club dinner with American farmers at the White House in Washington, DC, on June 25, 2026; President John F. Kennedy")
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NEED TO KNOW
- President Donald Trump repeated a false boast he often returns to at a White House event on Wednesday, Sept. 30, claiming, “I’m the only president that donated his salary”
- Trump said he donated his paychecks in his second term to his White House renovations
- Presidents John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover both donated their annual salaries
President Donald Trump repeated a false boast he often returns to at a White House event on Wednesday, Sept. 30, claiming, “I’m the only president that donated his salary.”
“I don’t get credit for anything. And I don’t really want credit,” Trump told an audience gathered for a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. “And if I don’t say it, nobody else will.”
Trump is wrong to claim he is the only U.S. president to donate his presidential salary, which currently sits north of $400,000 a year. He did concede that “they think George Washington maybe” gave away his salary, which is not entirely accurate.
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Trump said he donated his paychecks in his second term to his White House renovations, adding, “it’s called White House preservation.” He donated the first check of 2025 to the White House Historical Association, according to CNN reporter Daniel Dale.
The White House did not answer PEOPLE’s questions about where specifically the president donates his salary, referring questions to the president’s remarks.
On Wednesday, the 47th president went on to claim other presidents from wealthy backgrounds like his, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, never donated their salaries.
“Surprisingly, because we’ve had wealthy presidents — FDR was wealthy. JFK was wealthy,” said Trump, who reported more than $2 billion in income in 2025 alone.
Kennedy and Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover, donated their annual salaries, according to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. Hoover’s salary from 1929 to 1933 was $75,000 a year, according to the museum. By the time Kennedy arrived at the White House, presidents earned a pay bump to $100,000 a year.
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“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,” Hoover said in a newspaper interview in 1937, according to the museum. “I therefore kept the money that came to me as salary in a separate account and distributed it where I thought it would do the most good.”
“Part of it went to supplement the salaries of men who worked under me and whom the government paid less than I thought they were worth. Part of it went to charities,” the former mining industrialist added.
When Kennedy became president in 1961, his administration cited Hoover as an inspiration when it announced that the scion of a wealthy New England family would donate his salary to multiple charities, according to wire service reports at the time.
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Washington declined a salary while leading the Continental Army in the American Revolution, but later accepted $25,000 a year as president, according to Politico and the Washington Library at his Mount Vernon estate.
“In the history of our country, there’s never been a president that waived his salary,” Trump said in a speech in Georgia in February. “I’m the only schmuck.”
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