As the Hawaii wildfires continue to spell immeasurable devastation for the residents of the Aloha State, a different breed of wildfire has been making the rounds on the internet in the form of Dwayne Johnson and Oprah Winfrey‘s People’s Fund of Maui initiative, which has proven to be far more scandalous than a quick glance may suggest.
Indeed, any amount of money is of course helpful in Hawaii’s path toward recovery, but for two financial giants like Johnson and Oprah, offering up nothing more than a relative drop in the bucket — all whilst rationing the funds and asking the public for further donations — isn’t exactly the greatest look, so to speak.
But what did this aforementioned drop in the bucket amount to exactly? Here’s how much Oprah has given to the People’s Fund of Maui.
Has Oprah donated to her own Maui fund?
Together, Johnson and Oprah have each donated $5 million to their People’s Fund of Maui initiative for a total of $10 million. To put that into perspective, the two celebrities boast a combined $4.3 billion between them, meaning that their combined donation — of which Oprah, again, was responsible for half — amounts to just 0.23 percent of their resources.
Indeed, asking for donations from the general public when you’re more than capable of funding the rebuilding of a fair shake of houses on your own simply isn’t good optics no matter how you swing it, especially with the stakes as high as they are in Maui. Perhaps they’re both tucking away the rest of those would-be donations for an even bigger tragedy, but we’re not going to place any bets.