March 28: On This Day In 2019
He’s since been punished and fined nearly half a billion dollars for these lies. But OTDI 2019, David Fahrenthold and Jonathan O'Connell at the Washington Post dropped an exclusive bombshell spelling out how Trump had massively inflated his net worth and the value of his properties over the years.
The exposé showed that much of the business competence with which Trump impressed America was simply a lie. A fake. A mirage. When dealing with banks… and the voting public… Donald Trump had intentionally inflated his wealth by up to $3.6 billion.
Trump and his sons fraudulently boosted the “value” on many of their properties. As it came out in the 2023 New York trial, in one instance Trump claimed his apartment in NYC is 30,000 square feet…when in fact it’s about 1/3rd of that size. In another, a building was appraised as being worth $540 million, so the Trump Organization dutifully listed it in statements as being worth… $735.4 million.
Why does all this matter? As a financial matter, they lied so they could get more favorable loans from banks. That's stealing. And as a political matter, Trump portrays himself as an honest multi-billionaire. His followers admire that type of thing. If they had known how much of what he said about himself was a lie, would they have still voted for him?
Here’s a way to have some fun with Trump Funny Money: The WaPo has a tool to tell what your home would be worth if you lie like the Trump Family does. Let’s say you had a $400,000 home (the median price in the U.S.). If you applied the same markup as Trump did to his Florida house, you would tell the banks that your home is actually worth $13.6 million. Congrats!
Sources/Links for further reading
@fahrenthold and @jocwapo reported the 2019 Washington Post exclusive that started the ball rolling toward his conviction
@Pbump created the WaPo's Trump markup tool
NY Times reports on opening day of Trump’s civil fraud trial
ProPublica reports on the judge’s ruling that Trump inflated property values
Summary: Trump lies about his wealth. Inflates value of properties. Fined nearly half a billion dollars.