By ITV News Washington Producer Dominique Heckels

Today the White House revealed that President Trump is donating three months of his salary to the National Park Service.

Before becoming President of the United States, Donald Trump was best known for his billionaire status accumulated from his successful business empire - cue Apprentice theme tune. President Trump had previously promised to forgo his presidential salary and today Trump could say - potentially for the first time - he had met one of his campaign promises, no bill required.

In the White House press briefing, Sean Spicer handed over a cheque to the value of $78,333, confirming "every penny that the President received from the first quarter from Jan 20 noon forward" had been donated.

Mr Spicer was later questioned on the billions of dollars in expenses that President Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will inevitably cost the tax payer when Trump hosts bilateral talks at his luxurious beach house palace, Mar-a-Lago, at the end of the week.

The White House press secretary was quick to jump to Trump's defence, painting the president in a somewhat philanthropic light.

He said: "Firstly, the request to go to Mar-a-Lago was something that was negotiated with the Chinese, so I think this is a very high level visit that really has a huge impact on both our economic and international security. Secondly the president has an opportunity. This is not something you can control there is a security aspect that the secret service determines when the President and the family travels.

"And I would note, ironically, that this is a day that the President just donated a significant amount of money, of his salary back to the federal government, so respectfully it's like- at what point does he do enough? He just gave a very sizable donation. He isn't taking a salary, he's stepped down from his business, he's walked away from a lot. I think at some point he's done quite a bit in terms of making a donation to government."

An unlikely customer?

Mr Spicer said that Mr Trump chose the National Park Service based on several options his council presented to him, believing that there was a need to restore America's great battlegrounds. It appeared an unlikely choice given the history between Donald Trump and the National Park Service.

The National Park Service maintains and runs the National Mall where crowds gather for Presidential inaugurations. With this in mind, just one day after being sworn in as President, Donald Trump's administration contacted the National Park Service to complain after viewing a retweet of a picture from the day on its official twitter page.

The retweeted photo showed Trump's inauguration crowd - one that depicted far fewer crowds than those that turned out for Obama's inauguration eight years previous - placed side by side with one from his predecessor's big day. The retweet was later removed and the National Park Service issued an apology the following day.

Today's donation will surely secure a strong relationship between the President and the National Park Service and Mr Spicer said that Trump specifically chose this government entity as he thinks that there is "some work to do there, especially the need to restore our great battlegrounds."

Whether the "work need[ing] to be done" is to restore the battleground of the National Park Service's social media department's surveillance team however, is a question I would imagine both Mr Trump and Mr Spicer would swerve.