No, it's a sensible setup. It decouples operational problems at the receiver from the donor's tax and accounting.

Suppose you want to donate a largish sum to someone who's building and running some schools in Kenya. If you have one of those personal charities you can donate a lump sum to your own buffer charity whenever it suits you and taxwise that's all. The deed is done. The buffer can forward the money in later years, according to the progress of the Kenyan project.

The buffer is bound by charity rules and more or less has to forward the money somewhere charitable eventually. But if a particular project breaks down (which happens) it can stop sending money there, without any tax or accounting problems for the initial donor.

Yes, but he’s given $5.7B to the foundation and the foundation has payed out a few hundred million.

He literally only set up the foundation because the government wanted to tax him more .. the altruism of this ‘charity’ is handwavy at best.

That's hardly unusual. There are many, many foundations that have been endowed with a large sum that they invest. Many such foundations give away the interest they earn and aim to keep their capital roughly unchanged. Others attempt to spend their money slowly.

When I was a student I ran into a foundation that's been doing it for almost 200 years now, and I'm on the board of a foundation that's much younger but follows the same model.

Let me actually give an example. A little over a hundred years ago, someone who had earned a lot of money decided to set up a research foundation. His goal was to build a house, establish an organisation, and after that provide a steady sum each years, enough to pay the salaries of… I think his plan was 20 researchers.

His accounting would be similar to Elon's now.

Or the Clinton Foundation.

At least they had actual tangible impact, Trump pleaded guilty to running a fraud and is barred from operating a charity.

If conservatives didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards.

Tangible impact? On what sex trafficking? This is the same foundation that Epstein told people he was running you moron

Actively doing harm is not a tangible impact I desire in a charity.

Yes, defrauding child cancer patients causes actual harm.

That’s why trump is legally barred from operating a charity. Sorry your whataboutism isn’t working.

His supporters inability to admit any truth about him is a big factor as to why he has cost conservatives the past 3 elections.

Desiring any sort of consistency whatsoever is not "whataboutism".

If leftists didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any standards.

This is exactly why republicans keep losing, they keep trying to repeat lies but they’re not sticking.

I think those new Trump NFT trading cards are the secret to winning elections, I hope you bought yours.