Donald Trump has repeatedly portrayed himself as a successful businessman who is one of the wealthiest people on the planet, but a finance journalist blew a hole in that claim by looking at Trump’s financial information in the United Kingdom.
It stands to reason that if Trump were not bleeding money he wouldn’t need to force the Secret Service and members of the military to stay at his hotels on the taxpayer’s dime.
He also wouldn’t need the Republican Party and members of his administration to spend lavishly at his hotels either. Trump’s own campaign victory committee recently spent $400,000 to stay at his Washington DC hotel in the second quarter of 2020 alone.
We also know that Trump infamously lost more money than any American in the decade of the 1990s based on tax documents leaked to the press, a staggering $1.1 billion that he wrote off as a loss to avoid paying taxes for years.
Back in 2004, he received an inheritance from his father to the tune of $200 million. But he still can’t claim to be a billionaire. Hell, he may not even be a millionaire, according to Adam Davidson, a businessman and author of a book about the 21st century economy.
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Davidson explained on Twitter that Trump is “far poorer” than he claims because his financials in the United Kingdom show him losing money while inflating the value of his properties.
Hot take: Trump is demonstrably far poorer than he claims.
Again: Scotland holds the key.
His audited UK financials show money-losing properties with arbitrarily inflated values with no tie to actual market conditions.
Those are his ONLY audited financials.
1/
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
So, three businesses that lose around 5 million pounds a year and have a collective value of, say, 70M pounds (being generous) are claimed to bring in 150 million pounds a year!
And, again, those are his MOST trustworthy numbers.
2/
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
How can his businesses be losing money and turning a profit at the same time? Clearly, Trump doesn’t want people to know he’s bleeding money.
Davidson went on to point out that there’s no oversight on Trump’s financial claims and that he’s not only bad at finance and business in general, but he’s also probably taking money from oligarchs and helping them launder money as well.
All of his other financial claims have no constraint at all. They’re just made up with no oversight.
My best guess: he got around $200M from dad and now has $150M or so, because he’s bad at money and takes bad risks.
3/
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
I do think there is fairly strong evidence that he, also, makes money by helping oligarchs launder money.
BUT, he seems to also be bad at that. He makes dumb deals that involve too much risk and too little return.
4/
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
There are huge error bars around every number related to Trump. We have no idea how much his businesses make, how many assets he owns, and how much debt he has.
There is a good chance he, himself, has no idea. Because he has a small and inept finance team.
5/
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
All of this makes Davidson believe that Trump is either broke or is worth around $150 million, far lower than the “billionaire” status he claims to hold and far lower than his inheritance.
And he, himself, doesn’t understand business.
But I would wager that he is somewhere between broke and worth $150M or so. Which, of course, is very rich but not impressive. A $200M or so (we don’t know the real number) inheritance in 2004 should be worth far more today.
6/
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
And while Trump’s most hardcore supporters don’t mind his fiscal shadiness, Davidson says that Republicans in the suburbs, where Trump is losing voters to Joe Biden, know better.
When I’ve tried this logic on Trump supporters, it doesn’t work of course. They are then even MORE impressed with his hustle. A broke guy has a big plane? Cool!
7/
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
But those suburban “common sense” Republicans surely understand that if they leave their kids $200K and their kids are worth $100K 20 years after their death, their kids have messed up badly.
8/end
— adamdavidson (@adamdavidson) July 20, 2020
This is just one of the many reasons why Trump should be forced to release all of his financial documents going back decades. He’s clearly hiding something and Americans deserve to know the truth. However, broke or not, he’s still worthless.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
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