(CNN) — President Donald Trump said in October 2019 that being president is costing him money. Lots.
“If I lost $ 2 billion, $ 5 billion or less, it makes no difference,” he said. Trump. “I do not care. I am doing this for the country. I’m doing it for the people, “he said.
Well, he definitely cares. And now we know – thanks to the new Forbes 400 list released Tuesday– how much less rico is Trump today than when he ran and won the presidency in 2016.
Why did Trump’s fortune fall?
In 2016, Trump was worth $ 3.7 billion, according to Forbes. That figure dropped to $ 3.1 billion in 2017 and held through 2018 and 2019. But this year Trump’s net worth fell to $ 2.5 billion. That $ 600 million decrease took Trump from being the 275th richest person in the world. U.S in 2019 to the 352nd richest in 2020, a drop of 77 places. (It took a net worth of $ 2.1 billion to make the 400 list.)
Why the fall of Trump’s fortune? The pandemic of coronavirus. “The value of office buildings, hotels and resorts has been affected amid the pandemic,” he says the Forbes statement on Trump’s wealth.
Now, $ 2.5 billion is still a lot of money. I mean, A LOT of money. And being one of the 400 richest people in America is quite an exclusive undertaking. But if you don’t think his decline in overall wealth and his position on the Forbes 400 list will irritate Trump, then you don’t know him.
This excerpt, from Jonathan Greenberg, a former Forbes reporter, makes it clear how much Trump cares:
“In May 1984, an official from the Trump Organization called me 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 issue, we valued Trump’s assets at $ 200 million, just a fifth of what he claimed to own in our interviews. This time, his assistant insisted on the phone, I needed to understand how lined Trump really was.
“The official was John Barron, a name we now know as an alter ego of Trump himself.”
Bragging of fortune
So central is Trump’s wealth to his self-perception that he made a great show of how much money he had during his speech announcing his presidential bid in 2016.
“And I have assets – a large accounting firm, one of the most respected – (for) 9.24 billion dollars,” Trump told an audience at Trump Tower in June 2015. She added: “So I have a total net worth, and now with the increase, it will be much more than $ 10 billion. But here, a total net worth of – net worth, not assets, no – a net worth, after all debt, after all expenses, the biggest assets (are) Trump Tower, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, Bank building. of America in San Francisco, 40 Wall Street, sometimes referred to as the Trump Building just across from New York, many other places around the world. So the total is $ 8,737,540.00. (When Trump said these words, he waved a document like, uh, proof, or something.)
“I am really rich”, said in that speech, and later made it clear that all this talk about his money was nothing to show off. Because you know what? I don’t have to brag. I don’t have to, believe it or not, ”he said.
(Narrator: I don’t think so).
A month after that announcement, Trump was upping the ante, literally. His campaign issued a statement that said:
“Mr. Trump’s net worth has increased since the more than one year old financial statement presented in his presidential announcement. Real estate values in New York City, San Francisco, Miami, and many other places where you own property have risen significantly during this period. Your debt is a very small percentage of the value and with very low interest rates. As of this date, Mr. Trump’s net worth exceeds TEN BILLION DOLLARS.
Life changes fast
You’ll notice that just around the time Trump claimed a net worth of $ 10 billion, Forbes, which is the gold standard, ahem, when it comes to wealth, pegged his fortune at less than half that number (US $ 3.7 billion).
Why the discrepancy? Well look no further than this explanation of Trump on how he calculates his value: “My net worth fluctuates and goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings, but I try… yes, even my own feelings, as to where there is the world, where the world is going … and that can change quickly from one day to the next.
Bottom line: Life changes fast!
Trump’s need – and it is a need – to be very, very rich is widely regarded as one of the main reasons why you are still unwilling to publish any of your previous tax returns, being the first president in the post-Watergate era to enjoy that ignominious distinction. The speculation is that Trump knows his profits would show him considerably less wealthy than he has boasted for years, and in doing so reduce his appeal to voters who are drawn to his overstated money and attitude.
“They always call the other side ‘the elite’. Why are they elite? ”, asked Trump rhetorically at a campaign rally in Minnesota in 2018. “I have a much better apartment than them. I am smarter than them. I am richer than them. I became president and they did not, “he added.
The richer, the more wrong the others
Remember that the story that Donald Trump tells himself from his own life is that he is a self-made billionaire – ignore that “small” loan of $ 1 million given to him by his father out of college – whose wealth is proof that he is better than all the people who looked down on him and made fun of him over the years.
“My whole life has really been a ‘no’ and I fought against it”, Trump said at a New Hampshire town hall in October 2015. “It has not been easy for me, it has not been easy for me,” he remarked.
In Trump’s mind, the richer he is, the more people he has proven wrong. Wealth equals claim. And that’s why a decline in wealth, like the one you experienced last year, will bother you so much.
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