Donald Trump is not going to like this headline
It's the money, stupid.
On Tuesday, Forbes ran a piece with this headline: “Donald Trump Drops Off The Forbes 400 For Second Time In 3 Years.”
You could be forgiven for missing it. Kevin McCarthy, after all, was busy making history — not the good kind — as the first Speaker ever removed from his position.
But, you know who I can guarantee didn’t miss that story in Forbes? Donald John Trump.
For decades, Trump has been obsessed not just with his wealth but with the Forbes list specifically. As Forbes notes in its story:
He conned his way into sharing a spot on the inaugural list in 1982 with his father, Fred Trump, by convincing a reporter that he held a larger percentage of Fred’s fortune than he actually did.
And, like so much with Trump, trying to determine the truth among the lies about what he is really worth is very, very difficult.
Even before he became an official candidate for president, Trump put his wealth front and center — a living, breathing example of just how successful he had been in life.
“I'm the most successful person ever to run for the presidency, by far,” he told the Des Moines Register in early June 2015. “Nobody's ever been more successful than me. I'm the most successful person ever to run. Ross Perot isn't successful like me. Romney — I have a Gucci store that's worth more than Romney.”
When Trump formally announced his candidacy later that month, he said that “I have total net worth of $8.73 billion. I’m not doing that to brag. I’m doing that to show that’s the kind of thinking our country needs.” He added: “I’m really rich…that’s the kind of thinking you need for this country. It sounds crass, it’s not crass.”
A month into his candidacy, Trump revised his net worth upwards.
“Real estate values in New York City, San Francisco, Miami and many other places where he owns property have gone up considerably during this period of time,” his campaign said in a statement. “His debt is a very small percentage of value, and at very low interest rates. As of this date, Mr. Trump’s net worth is in excess of TEN BILLION DOLLARS.”
(And, yes, the ALL CAPS were in the original statement.)
The truth is that pinning down Trump’s actual net worth has been severely limited by his refusal to turn over any tax records. (He was — and is — the first major party presidential candidate in more than four decades to refuse to release any of his returns.)
Thankfully, we have Forbes, which has kept very close track of Trump’s yo-yoing wealth.
And, according to Forbes, Trump’s net worth was highest in 2015, when he was worth $4.5 billion. It steadily declined during his years in the White House, a fact Trump made a point to talk about regularly while in office.
“I said to one of my friends, a very wealthy friend, I said, ‘You know, I’ll bet you it cost me $2 or 3 billion and it’s worth every penny of it,’” Trump told Fox News in 2018. “I don’t need the money and it’s worth every penny because I’m doing so much for the country.”
And there was this in 2020: “[It] cost me billions of dollars to be president of the United States.”
The other window we got into Trump’s actual wealth came in 2020 when the New York Times got its hands on a number of the businessman’s past tax returns.
The big revelation was that Trump had paid no federal income taxes in 11 of the 18 years that the Times had records for. Which, amazing.
But, buried in the Times reporting was this nugget:
In the 1990s, Mr. Trump nearly ruined himself by personally guaranteeing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, and he has since said that he regretted doing so. But he has taken the same step again, his tax records show. He appears to be responsible for loans totaling $421 million, most of which is coming due within four years.
And this revelation:
He has reduced his tax bill with questionable measures, including a $72.9 million tax refund that is the subject of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service.
So, there’s that to consider too.
The latest from Forbes is that Trump’s net worth is $2.6 billion — meaning he missed the Forbes 400 list by $300 million. As Forbes’ Dan Alexander writes:
His net worth is down more than $600 million from a year ago. The biggest reason: Truth Social, his social-media business. Trump once envisioned a significant percentage of the country logging onto the platform. But that never happened. Roughly 6.5 million have signed up so far, about 1% of the total on X (né Twitter). Trump’s 90% stake in Truth Social’s parent company has plummeted in value from an estimated $730 million to less than $100 million.
This is not the first time that Trump has fallen off the list. In 1990, five years after making the list, Forbes removed Trump — exposing his now-familiar habit of grossly overestimating his net worth.
What is Donald Trump really worth? His estranged wife, Ivana, would like to know. So would his creditors, who are many. The public, fascinated with Trump's exploits and his bigger-than-life personality, relishes the guessing game. This we can say with confidence: His net worth is nothing like the $3 billion Business Week magazine estimated three years ago and has dropped considerably from our own 1989 estimate of $1.7 billion.
The magazine estimated that, after considering all of Trump’s assets and debts he was probably worth around $500 million.
He also dropped off the Forbes 400 in 2021 — when his net worth was estimated at $2.5 billion.
Just how much does Trump care about making (or not making) the Forbes list? A whole lot. Consider this anecdote from former Forbes reporter Jonathan Greenberg from the mid 80s:
In May 1984, an official from the Trump Organization called to tell me how rich Donald J. Trump was. I was reporting for the Forbes 400, the magazine’s annual ranking of America’s richest people, for the third year. In the previous edition, we’d valued Trump’s holdings at $200 million, only one-fifth of what he claimed to own in our interviews. This time, his aide urged me on the phone, I needed to understand just how loaded Trump really was.
The official was John Barron – a name we now know as an alter ego of Trump himself.
(For MUCH more on “John Barron,” read this.)
Look. None of this is to suggest Donald Trump isn’t wealthy. By virtually any standard he is. What it is to suggest is that he has shown, for decades, an obsession with how he measures up with other very wealthy people — and a willingness to exaggerate how much money he actually has to move himself up those ranks.
(A New York judge recently ruled that Trump had drastically overvalued his assets for years as a way to gain more favorable loan terms and reap other financial benefits.)
Trump’s wealth isn’t just a semantic argument. From his announcement speech all the way through this 2024 campaign, he has used his net worth to make the case for his candidacy. He had succeeded in America and, if voters chose him, they could to, the argument goes.
I’ve always believed that we underestimated (and underestimate) the extent to which votes for Trump are aspirational. People want to be rich enough to be able to say and do whatever they want in life — and they see Trump as someone who can do exactly that.
Trump’s wealth then is central to his appeal. Which makes the fact that he has relentlessly exaggerated it over decades all the more remarkable. Or, maybe considering all we know about Trump, not.
This narcissistic obsession with wealth is the main reason why, IMHO, Trump is physically present at the Fraud Trial in New York - it is the case which impacts the core of how he has defined himself, both to himself, as well as to the world, as well as how he has defined the quality of his friends. I do not think any of the other cases are as important to Trump right now than the case which will have a bearing on how much he is actually worth, and may make him give up some of what he has used to define himself. I sense it overshadows even the case in Washington for trying to overthrow the government.
I’m glad I didn’t inherit a half billion dollars if it makes you as psychically damaged as Trump. I suppose Fred probably did much of that, tho. Still, I always say he could’ve spent some of that on therapy and maybe had a happier and more rewarding life.