A few months ago, shortly after Donald Trump filed a radical (and by any fair measure, frivolous) $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, he told reporters that he assumed “nobody would care” if he struck a deal with his own administration because he and his team were “thinking about doing something for charity.”

The president’s comments now appear absurd. Instead of securing funds for charitable purposes, the Republican reached an agreement with his own administration for $1.776 billion in taxpayer funds that will be directed to the White House’s political allies, as part of a corrupt gambit that has been widely panned as an unprecedented slush fund.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday morning, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island reminded acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about the president’s stated commitment to use these funds for charitable purposes and asked Blanche whether he would follow through on what Trump said he wanted.

“I’m aware that he said that,” the Republican lawyer replied, “but that’s not ultimately what the settlement calls for.”

Yeah, we’ve noticed.

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Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

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• On charitable donations, Trump adds to his long list of broken promises