Just a week ago, Donald Trump was boasting during a TV interview that, as he explores a presidential run, he’s preparing to release his financial records. And those documents, he said, will show that he’s worth “much more” than the $2.7 billion that has been estimated by some business publications.
Well, The Donald once again has shown that he thinks the media and the voters are too stupid to catch on to his schtick. He apparently thinks that entering the presidential fray and facing the subsequent scrutiny is no different than granting an interview to Entertainment Tonight or TMZ.
No, Mr. Trump, this is the real world, not the red carpet, and everything you say is questioned and researched.
Former N.Y. governor and attorney general Eliot Spitzer, no stranger to taking on New York’s upper crust, sat down with legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on his CNN show “In the Arena” last night to make some sense of Trump’s financial situation, according to Mediaite.com. Toobin, relying upon legal documents, pointed to evidence that Trump is “puffing up his net worth.”
Spitzer and Toobin also indicated that a legal deposition taken by Trump a few years ago offers dozens of contradictions and “a lot of material to be exploited” by political foes and presidential contenders.
Trump valued his California golf course complex at $360 million, about $330 million more than it was worth three years prior. That jump was based on real estate that did not exist. Trump boasted that he was building a 75-mansion complex on the property. But five years later only six homes have been completed — and only three of those have been sold.
As for the real estate mogul’s million dollar speaking fees? They’re actually something more like $400,000.
And then there is Trump’s net worth which, according to The Donald, appears to be somewhere around $3.5 billion dollars. But when attempting to acquire loans, two banks did their own valuations and found wildly disparate numbers — North Fork Bank valued him at $1.2 billion, and Deutsche Bank put the number somewhere around $788 million.
In Trump World, the numbers just don’t add up.
But more damning than his numbers are Trump’s own words about how he arrived at them. During a legal deposition where he was asked whether he had exaggerated his net worth, Trump said, “I’m no different than a politician running for office… you don’t want to say negative things,” adding, “I think everyone does.”
But, hey, $788 million, $3.5 billion – the facts aren’t that far apart. Right?
Maybe Trump should choose Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona as his running mate.

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