Donald Trump, just as rich as he wants to be

The Donald, as esnl’s dad would’ve said, “is as full of shit as a Christmas goose.”

Consider this Hollywood Reporter headline from last 17 June after he first announced his run for the White House:

Donald Trump Campaign Offered Actors $50 to Cheer for Him at Presidential Announcement

A casting call was sent out last week “looking to cast people for the event to wear t-shirts and carry signs and help cheer him in support of his announcement.”

In other words, the only groundswell of support was his own swollen head.

But, above all else, Trump is a showman, and the brand he’s selling is himself.

And if in order to sell the brand he needs to sling the shit [another Dad-ism], then let the feces be flung, starting with just how rich he is.

From MarketWatch , 29 September 2015:

Presidential GOP front-runner Donald Trump isn’t as rich as he thinks. At least, that is according to Forbes’ magazine’s most recent issue slated to hit newsstands October.

The Donald, as the outspoken real estate mogul’s former wife Ivana dubbed him, has pegged his net worth at around $10 billion. But according to its ranking of the wealthiest people in the U.S., Forbes is listing Trump’s riches at $4.5 billion.

That is hardly a figure to sneeze it, considering that the entry into Forbes latest rich list required a net worth of at least $1.7 billion. But Trump wasn’t pleased with the financial magazine’s assessment of his wealth. Here’s what he said, according to an article by Forbes’ Randall Lane:

“I think you’re trying to make me as poor as possible,” Trump told the magazine. Trump also offered this: “And look, all I can say is Forbes is a bankrupt magazine, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That is all I’m gonna say.”

And here’s what Bloomberg thought he was worth as of 28 July of last year [with the methodology at the link]:

Here’s what Timothy L. O’Brien, byusiness editor of the Sunday New York Times business section, discovered when researching his book TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, excerpted here by Newsweek:

Evaluating Donald’s riches was like trying to bottle smoke. At one point, when Forbes magazine posited that the Trump coffers were brimming with $2.6 billion, he told me the actual figure was $4 billion to $5 billion. Later the same day, he called and amended his own assessment—to $1.7 billion.

While I was doing research for TrumpNation later on, he said he had $5 billion to $6 billion stashed away, but when I spent the night at his Palm Beach estate, a glossy little pamphlet found its way into my room stating he had amassed $9.5 billion. And on and on and on.

Three executives with intimate knowledge of Donald’s finances and track record told me at the time that they thought he was worth $150 million to $250 million. Grousing, said Donald.

Trump sued O’Brien and his publisher, alleging that the author had cost him tarnished his brand and sought $5 billion in damages.

As a result of the lawsuit, Andrew Ceresney, attorney for the defendants, was able to depose Trump under oath on 19-20 December 2007. Here’s a very telling excerpt, via CNNMoney [emphasis added]:

Ceresney: Mr. Trump, you also claim that the book damaged your reputation, correct?

Trump: Yes.

Trump: I’m worth whatever I feel

Ceresney: And that’s because you are perceived publicly, you believe, as a billionaire, correct?

Trump: That’s correct.

Ceresney: And the book —

Trump: I am a billionaire. I’m not perceived. I mean, I am a billionaire. Of course, if you read Tim O’Brien’s writings and what was then transposed into the The New York Times, you would certainly not think that. But I am a billionaire, many times over, on a conservative basis.

Ceresney: And you believe that because the book, at least according to you, suggested that you were not a billionaire that damaged your reputation, correct?

Trump: Yes.

Ceresney: And you think that that has hurt you in your business dealings? Is that what you’ve said?

Trump: Well, I’ve lost deals. I’ve lost specific deals because of it.

>snip<

Ceresney: Mr. Trump, have you always been completely truthful in your public statements about your net worth of properties?

Trump: I try.

Ceresney: Have you ever not been truthful?

Trump: My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings, but I try.

Ceresney: Let me just understand that a little. You said your net worth goes up and down based upon your own feelings?

Trump: Yes, even my own feelings, as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day. . .

Ceresney: When you publicly state a net worth number, what do you base that number on?

Trump: I would say it’s my general attitude at the time that the question may be asked. And as I say, it varies.

On 15 July 2009, Reuters reported the outcome of the litigation:

A New Jersey judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit for defamation filed by Donald Trump against an author whose book gave an estimate of the real estate developer’s wealth much lower than Trump’s own.

Superior Court Judge Michele Fox rejected arguments by Trump’s lawyers that he had been the victim of “actual malice” as a result of Timothy O’Brien’s book “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald” published in October 2005.

Reading her opinion from the bench in Camden, Fox also ruled that co-defendant Warner Books, part of Time Warner Inc, was not “vicariously liable,” as Trump had argued, because O’Brien was an independent contractor.

And consider this from the Martín Paredes, written last August for El Paso News:

On July 22, 2015, the Federal Election Commission released Trump’s financial disclosure forms. Donald Trump had filed the financial disclosure forms, as part of his running for president a week earlier, again proclaiming his net worth at $10 billion.

CNN analyzed the financial disclosure forms and came up with assets of $1.4 billion and liabilities of $265 million. That would make his net worth about $1.25 billion. That still makes him a billionaire but it is nowhere close to the $10 billion he continues to promote. More importantly, the financial disclosure form is a snapshot of his finances from the previous year.

As most of you know, many companies stopped doing business with Donald Trump as a result of his disparaging remarks about Mexicans. Many of those are significant sources of income for him, according to the financial disclosure forms. Therefore, it is likely his net worth will drop as a result of him attacking Mexicans, like me.

But does it all matter?

Certainly not to Tryump’s base, who are likely to interpret honest journalism as propaganda pushed by rich elites — all the while not realizing that Trump is precisely that, a member of the rich elite, albeit one of the more bombastic ones.

And then there’s this from Deborah Friedell, writing in the London Review of Books:

Trump says that his great insight was realising that his life could be an advertisement for his work. ‘It’s really quite simple. If I were to take a full-page ad in the New York Times to publicise a project, it might cost $40,000′ – this was 1987 – ‘but if the New York Times writes even a moderately positive one-column story about one of my deals, it doesn’t cost me anything.’ In 1985, he announced that he was going to build the ‘world’s tallest building’ on New York’s West Side – it was never going to happen, but he got ‘attention, and that alone creates value’. Even his two divorces were ‘good for business’, he says, because tabloid coverage of his affairs made him seem virile. His executives fretted, but Trump told them it was great for the brand: ‘Guys love it.’ He bought a yacht though he hates being on the water and would never spend a night on it, because he didn’t want people to think he couldn’t afford one. The Trumps began developing luxury hotels, condos, casinos. Donald bought a football team, an airline. The Trump name was everywhere: so many deals! D’Antonio explains that lenders would kick in ‘extra money for operating or upgrading a new property’, and Trump needed the cash just to keep up with basic expenses. One of his executives admitted that ‘we never had any money on hand. That’s why we had to keep doing more deals.’ Trump’s company went bankrupt; he borrowed money on the strength of his future inheritance; his company went bankrupt again. He lost the yacht. When the stock market crashed on Black Monday, 19 October 1987, Trump told the press that of course he’d seen it coming and had made $200 million. According to [Trump biographer] Gwenda Blair, he’d actually lost $22 million. It was a necessary lie, since he’d just published The Art of the Deal, which promised that anyone could become rich if they just tried to be more like him. The ghostwritten book made the bestseller lists, even if it wasn’t – as he often says – ‘the number one selling business book of all time’.

And we close with a headline from Money Talks News:

Trump Worth $10 Billion Less Than If He’d Simply Invested in Index Funds

Forbes reports Donald Trump is worth $4.1 billion; Trump says $10 billion. Either way, he’d be worth a lot more if he simply retired 30 years ago and put his money in an unmanaged stock fund.