Donald Trump is really rich, right?
Well, he certainly says he is. His latest personal financial disclosure puts his wealth at $10 billion.
But no one actually knows if that’s true. Rigorous and objective analysis by reporters puts Trump’s wealth far below his self-reported status as a billionaire 10 times over, with most recent estimates pegging it at between $2.9-4.5 billion.
When Tim O’Brien wrote a 2005 biography of Trump, here’s what he found:
Three people with direct knowledge of Donald’s finances, people who had worked closely with him for years, told me that they thought his net worth was somewhere between $150 million and $250 million. By anyone’s standards this still qualified Donald as comfortably wealthy, but none of these people thought he was remotely close to being a billionaire.
How did Trump respond to the accusation that the central claim of his public character was fake? By saying it didn’t really matter if it were true, while also throwing in some crass misogyny, O’Brien wrote:
Donald dismissed this as naysaying..
Protesters organized by a progressive Jewish group occupied the lobby of Trump Tower in New York...
