When Warren Buffett released his tax information on Monday, the media went wild. But they refused to report that nearly $2 billion of his “charitable contributions” funded abortion.
According to Buffett’s Oct. 10 statement, he made nearly $2.86 billion in “charitable contributions” during 2015, “of which more than $2.85 billion were not taken as deductions and never will be.”
Buffett publicized his tax information in response to Donald Trump’s claim that Buffett took a larger tax deduction than Trump. “Many of her [Hillary Clinton’s] friends took bigger deductions -- Warren Buffett took a massive deduction,” Trump said in the Oct. 9 presidential debate.
While records of Buffett’s 2015 donations were not yet available, records from 2003-2014 revealed that Buffett gave at least $1,828,082,697 to abortion groups.
Buffett gave more than $440 million to Planned Parenthood alone, which will mark its 100th anniversary on Oct. 16. He has also donated to The National Abortion Federation, the Guttmacher Institute (originally closely associated with Planned Parenthood), and NARAL Pro-Choice America.
The New York Times, CNN Money, USA Today, Vox, Bloomberg, Business Insider, The Huffington Post (via Reuters), The Washington Post, and CBS This Morning have all covered Buffett’s tax returns so far, but only Vox hinted at his involvement in abortion.
Buffett’s Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation “is one of the biggest backers of family planning and reproductive health and rights causes in the United States,” Vox writer Dylan Matthews wrote. He refused to use the word “abortion.”
The media previously concealed Buffett’s abortion donations when touting his Hillary Clinton endorsement in August 2016.
