When Donald Trump was running for president, he steadfastly refused to release his taxes or in fact any meaningful details about his finances, instead declaring that the IRS was "auditing" All Of The Taxes and that he was worth roughly Ten Billion Dollars. He then proceeded to rampage his way through the presidency by refusing to divest from any of his holdings; by using his hotels, golf courses, and private clubs as backdrops for federal functions (at public expense, of course); and generally devoting himself to squeezing out every dime of grift he could grift.
So given that, how are his finances doing? Surely his constant efforts to prop up his own properties are putting change in his pockets, right?
Or, says Forbes ... not.
While the experiment continues to unfold, in real time, the early results are in. Much as he’s trying—and he’s definitely trying—Donald Trump is not getting richer off the presidency. Just the opposite. His net worth, by our calculation, has dropped from $4.5 billion in 2015 to $3.1 billion the last two years, knocking the president 138 spots lower on the latest The Forbes 400 (which will be published in full tomorrow).
Ha ha ha ha ha—sorry. Gosh, isn't that interesting.
Forbes reports that part of the drop is due to "deeper reporting," which has revealed that Donald has been lying about even more of his holdings than reporters suspected he was lying about. Part of it is because Trump, heavily invested in commercial real estate, is getting eaten alive by the same market trends that have been closing malls across America. And part of it is because everybody f--king hates him now, making his brand toxic to a great many customers. Charging the Secret Service for golf cart rentals as they dutifully follow him around his own properties isn't going to make a dent in any of those three things. Unless Trump starts ordering that every American man, woman, and child take one of his carts out for a weekend jaunt, he's not going to make $1.4 billion off the scam.
Even his golf courses aren't immune. Revenues are down, and that's in part because of the man's incessant visits.
It goes beyond politics—guests now endure metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs. “It’s not a country club experience,” a source familiar with Trump’s golf business says. “It was captivating at first, but it has become tiresome.”
Mind you, the sort of people willing to pal around with the likes of Donald Trump on weekends have a very high threshold for finding something "tiresome."
Well there we go, a bit of good news for a change. Donald is thoroughly tanking his business—or perhaps he'll be blaming his sons Donald Jr. and Quday for tanking his business. That doesn't even count what might happen after investigators run down new leads from longtime lawyer Michael Cohen, campaign manager Paul Manafort, and other plea-bargaining allies with knowledge of his past business connections—or dig more deeply into the money laundering accusations that have dogged him for years.
He's going to be irate when he hears about this. The odds are 20 percent or higher that he declares the United States will be going to war against the next person he sees in an elevator.