Veterans protesting Donald Trump Tuesday told CBS the billionaire needs to stop using them as "props" in his campaign for the presidency.
CBS correspondent Major Garrett interviewed veterans that were protesting outside of Trump Tower in New York City, some of whom were registered Democrats.
"Outside Trump Tower veterans, some registered Democrats said Trump cannot buy their votes," Garrett said.
"No matter how much he donates, he still is not standing for the values that veterans stand for," veteran Alexander McCoy said.
"Trump needs to stop," Mickiela Montoya said. "He's using veterans as props."
This criticism comes from a recent disclosure of his donations to different veterans groups. Instead of attending a Republican debate on Fox in January, he decided to hold a fundraiser for veterans, claiming to have raised $6 million for various charities. Discrepancies arose over how much Trump had raised and how much money had actually been doled out to the different veterans groups.
The AP reported that many of the large Trump checks to veteran organizations only went out last week:
More than a dozen big checks flowed out of New York last week, bound for veterans' charities from Donald Trump. On Tuesday, he announced he had made good on his promise of last January to give the groups millions of dollars from a highly publicized fundraiser.
The announcement by the presumptive Republican presidential candidate came in the midst of a 40-minute rant against "dishonest" and "sleazy" reporters who have been pressing the issue.
The largest donation, a $1 million check dated May 24 and drawn from Donald J. Trump's personal account, was addressed to a small Tuckahoe, New York, group that provides scholarships to the children of fallen Marines.
Trump had been interviewed that same day by The Washington Post, which for weeks had been raising questions about where the promised money was, urging him to disclose recipients of the millions raised during a splashy telethon-style fundraiser he held in Iowa in January in place of a Fox debate he was boycotting.
"Why do you resent just the verification process that is natural?" Garrett asked Trump at the press conference on Tuesday.
"Because I wanted to make this out of the goodness of my heart," Trump said. "I didn't want to do this with the press is all involved and all of a sudden everybody's going ‘where did it go? Who did it go to?’’