Are you sitting down? I only ask because this is going to rock your world. Ready?
Donald Trump lied.
I know! And even more shocking, he lied in a way that inflates his importance and makes him appear much more successful than he really is. Who could have predicted?
It appears that when Donald Trump said that he made $694 million last year, he didn’t actually mean Donald Trump made that much. He meant that the whole Trump Organization—failing casinos, half-empty hotels, Chinese tie factories—pulled in that much. Oh, and he also didn’t mean “income” in the way that most of the world means, as in money he got to take home. Instead, Trump was talking total revenue before expenses. Not taxes, of course. Because Donny don’t play that game. But even Trump is sometimes forced to pay a bill somewhere in his electroplated empire.
So how much did Donald Trump really make? That's a good question.
There is no telling from this form what Trump truly made as income. But documents he filed overseas indicate there could be a great discrepancy between what he claimed at the debate and what he banked. These filings in the United Kingdom cover the operations of two Scottish golf resorts, one at Turnberry and one at Aberdeen. These courses are major enterprises in Trump's wide-ranging international golf empire.
What did Trump make off those courses? If you’re only considering revenue, as Trump did when coming up with that $694 million number, the two courses pulled in $23 million. Meanwhile, back in the real world where expenses count, the courses lost $3 million.
When you start to chop out expenses, the real question becomes: Did Donald Trump make any money at all?
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The golfing revenue discrepancies call into question much of what Trump reported in his FEC financial disclosure form. On that filing, $415 million of the $694 million Trump touted at the debate was described as some kind of "revenue." And the rest of that amount was money that also might not take into account the costs of his ventures, such as rent and land sales. Perhaps a large percentage of his reported revenue might have been profit, but the FEC form provides no way to determine that. Trump's income could be dramatically less than what he claimed.
Of course, we’d have a much better idea of what Trump actually made—or lost—if he would release his taxes. So we’ll never really know.
The only thing we can tell at the moment is that Donald Trump lied about how rich he is. Again.
For those wondering why someone who claims to be a billionaire would be tapping what’s supposed to be a charity in order to pay his legal bills and make a few timely bribes, the reason may be simple: the quarter or million or so that Trump lifted out of his foundation to cover his own bills in the last year, may represent a significant portion of his real income.