Money And Politics: How Donald Trump Has Grown His Wealth In 2024

Forbes

This compilation of 'Forbes Talks' interviews covers the reporting of Forbes reporters Dan Alexander and Zach Everson on former President Donald Trump's wealth from July to October 2024.  Trump is once again running for President with JD Vance running mate on the Republican ticket. Despite court cases, real estate portfolio drops, and releasing a 'Trump shoe', Trump's net worth remains strong.  0:00 The RNC Is Paying This Trump Family Member Six Figures (Originally Aired: Jul 19, 2024) 5:30 How Much Donald Trump Made While In The White House (Originally Aired: Aug 14, 2024) 18:22 How Mar-a-Lago Has Made Donald Trump So Much Money (Originally Aired: Sep 3, 2024) 27:08 This Is How Donald Trump Lost Millions On His D.C. Hotel—Years After He Sold It (Originally Aired: Sep 11, 2024) 37:48 How Donald Trump Made It Back On The Forbes 400 (Originally Aired: Oct 1, 2024)  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now is my Forbes

00:00:06colleague, staff writer Zach Everson. Zach, thanks for coming on.

00:00:12Thanks for having me on again, Brittany. Appreciate it.

00:00:14The RNC wrapped up in Milwaukee this week, and you are reporting, quote, yet another

00:00:19Trump is converting donor funds into personal income. Talk to us about who.

00:00:26This time it is Lara Trump. As we know, she is the co-chair of the RNC, which is the number

00:00:31two position, having just been voted in there a few months ago. And looking through the

00:00:36latest campaign finance reports, you see that the RNC is paying her what looks like it'll

00:00:41be an annual salary of $163,000. So, you know, certainly something that looks competitive

00:00:48and a fair salary, assuming she's doing the job that she was elected to do. But it's also,

00:00:54you know, just another example of a Trump family member pocketing GOP donor cash.

00:01:00So what is her specific history of being paid donor funds?

00:01:06So in this case, this is the first time her name has actually showed up in FEC records

00:01:12as a recipient. Does not mean it's the first time she's received donor funds, though. Back

00:01:17in 2020, HuffPost reported that the Trump campaign was paying her, along with Kim Guilfoyle,

00:01:25salaries, but they were not being paid directly. Instead, they were kind of being paid as like

00:01:29subcontractors almost. The money was going to then campaign manager Brad Parscale's company,

00:01:35which was then in turn passing the money out to Lara Trump and Kim Guilfoyle.

00:01:41I do want to take a couple steps back here. And aside from being the daughter in law of

00:01:45the former president, who exactly is Lara Trump?

00:01:50She is. Well, she's married to Eric and she is a former TV personality. She was a producer

00:01:57with Inside Edition. She also toyed with running for Senate in 2020. I believe it was did not

00:02:04end up running, but she's been pretty active in the campaign. Most notably, she was hosting

00:02:10a online show on. I believe it was on the president's Facebook page several years ago

00:02:16where it was like a daily news show, but done specifically just for the campaign. The reason

00:02:21the campaign was paying her previously was that she I think her title was a senior adviser

00:02:26or something along those lines. And so if we remember RNC chair history, Ronald

00:02:32McDaniel was actually the chair for a while. Now there's co-chairs Lara Trump as well as

00:02:37Michael Whatley. So how does her six figure salary compare to his?

00:02:43It's significantly less. So it's one of the things that's confusing is that it's the second

00:02:47person in charge is the co-chair. There's no actually there are two co-chairs. There's

00:02:51a chair and then a co-chair. He makes significantly more than that. But it seems like he might

00:02:56also have more on his plate. He pulls in about three hundred and thirty thousand dollars

00:03:00annually according to FEC filings. But he's also the RNC general counsel. So you're not

00:03:08just getting somebody who's heading the group, but you're also getting an attorney there

00:03:12as well. And what about her counterpart at the DNC

00:03:16chair of that, Jamie Harrison? Yes. Jamie Harrison's actually a little bit

00:03:21higher up than where she is because he is the head of that. There was no applicable

00:03:25person to compare it to in the DNC because all of their their number two person is called

00:03:30the vice chair. And they have like six of them. And I believe five of them were elected

00:03:34officials who have other jobs. There was one other person there whose name didn't

00:03:39pop up. But Jamie Harrison makes one hundred seventy seven thousand dollars a year in his

00:03:43job, which these days seems to largely be getting in Twitter fights with Nate Silver.

00:03:49And you've reported about this before, but remind us how Donald Trump, as well as his

00:03:54family, has turned donor funds in the past into personal income.

00:03:59So the RNC has forked over at least three million dollars to Trump's businesses since

00:04:062016, which is a whopping sum, you know, to be honest, especially when you compare it

00:04:12to the fact that prior to him assuming control of the party in 2016, they had only spent

00:04:17thirty nine thousand dollars. So, you know, Trump has businesses all over the place. They

00:04:23weren't going to them until he was in charge of the party. So they fit his business is

00:04:28three million dollars. And then Donald Trump Jr. also has gotten in on the act. Again,

00:04:33not not directly, but in 2019 and 2020, the RNC bought a total of about four hundred thousand

00:04:40dollars worth of both of his books. So, you know, he didn't get all four hundred thousand

00:04:45of that. There are obviously some costs involved with books, but he would have gotten some

00:04:48of it in addition to getting a boost on the charts. That would have certainly helped him

00:04:52with bestseller list. And is there any indication that this is going

00:04:57to continue as the campaign heads into November? You know, yes, I mean, she's she's still in

00:05:04that job, so it seems like our Trump is still obviously going to be bringing in a salary

00:05:08and there is no sign whatsoever that the Trump's plan on stopping the RNC and other political

00:05:16entities for this. So I suspect we will continue to see this for as long as Trump's are high

00:05:23up in the party. Zach Everson, per usual, thanks for your reporting.

00:05:29Thanks for having me on again. Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking

00:05:35news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now is my Forbes colleague, senior editor Dan

00:05:39Alexander. Dan, thanks so much for coming on.

00:05:42Hey, it's your thing, Brittany. You were reporting former President Donald

00:05:46Trump made five hundred and fifty million dollars during his time as president. I mean,

00:05:51that number is just staggering. But talk first about some of those questions surrounding

00:05:55Trump's finances that took until now to answer. Yeah, you know, we've known a lot of things

00:06:01about Trump's finances. Obviously, there's been a ton of attention on what his financial

00:06:06portfolio was like, how much money you could have made. But there are still some fundamental

00:06:10questions that remain unanswered. So we knew how much revenue he brought in, but we didn't

00:06:14really know how much profit, for instance. That's a harder number to figure out because

00:06:18you have to know both the amount of money that's coming in and the expenses that are

00:06:22against that. This story was the first one to really take the whole portfolio over four

00:06:27years and on a property by property basis. So, OK, here's what the operating profits

00:06:33of this business were and then tally it up over the four years. And at the end of it,

00:06:37you do get to that very big number, five hundred and fifty million dollars.

00:06:41Can you talk about specifically how you were able to tally these numbers and figure out

00:06:46how to arrive at the number five hundred and fifty million?

00:06:49Sure. So there are several documents that came out while Trump was president, but many

00:06:55more that have come out since he left office are in part through the fraud trial in New

00:06:59York, in part because one of the House committees releases tax returns.

00:07:04And if you combine all of these documents that have come out over several years, you

00:07:09can sort of fill in the gaps and find the missing holes to then figure out, OK, what

00:07:13were the profitability of all of the properties, not just a random one here or a random one

00:07:18there, but each year, the whole portfolio.

00:07:21How much are they bringing in?

00:07:23Five hundred and fifty million dollars is a hard number to wrap your head around, but

00:07:28I want to talk about just how unprecedented this is.

00:07:31We know a president makes four hundred thousand dollars a year.

00:07:35So aside from salary, historically have presidents brought in any other additional income

00:07:40during their time in office or anything even comparable to five hundred and fifty million

00:07:44dollars? Well, presidents have long had other types of income.

00:07:50You know, one of the more typical ones is, let's say, the publish a book while you're

00:07:53campaigning and then you collect royalty checks once you're in office.

00:07:57That's a pretty typical thing. But in those cases, you know, we're generally talking about

00:08:00hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe low millions.

00:08:03Five hundred and fifty million dollars is an extraordinary amount of money.

00:08:07And what's different in Trump's case is that he took this multibillion dollar business

00:08:11and rather than divesting from it, carried it into office.

00:08:15And that ensured that these profits that were throwing off, in some cases, more than ten

00:08:19million dollars a year would continue to do so while he served, which, you know, of

00:08:23course, gave him all sorts of potential conflicts of interest, but also gave him this

00:08:28constant income stream that he had grown to expect.

00:08:32So, Dan, I would love for you to take us year by year.

00:08:35Let's start when he's inaugurated in 2017.

00:08:38How much did he make that year and how did he make it?

00:08:41So his earnings that year were one hundred and forty one million dollars.

00:08:45Now, in every year, the biggest generator of his earnings are really a couple of office

00:08:51buildings that he owns. He has a wide ranging empire, but really the heart of his

00:08:55earnings come from just maybe a half dozen properties or so.

00:08:58So you're looking at 1290 Avenue in the Americas in New York City, 555 California Street

00:09:04in California, in San Francisco, 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, 6 East 57th Street

00:09:10in Midtown Manhattan.

00:09:12So those are the properties that really are sort of dominating his income statement.

00:09:16Now, interestingly, when he first joined the White House or went into the White House, he

00:09:21was still dealing with a lot of fallout from his campaign.

00:09:24So many of the licensing deals that he had had had gone away.

00:09:29Of course, The Apprentice was no longer kicking off significant amounts of income.

00:09:33And so that one hundred and forty one million dollars in his first year, while a lot

00:09:37wasn't as much as he had been earning, for example, in 2015, the year that he announced

00:09:42that he was going to run for president.

00:09:44Then as he proceeds through the presidency, his business sort of begins to stabilize.

00:09:50And, you know, his golf clubs that weren't doing so well start to do a little bit better.

00:09:55His office buildings are continuing to improve.

00:09:59He's kind of, you know, reaching a point of, you know, stability for the company.

00:10:05And that continues on into 2019 as the economy is doing well and Trump continues to do

00:10:10well. So 18 makes one hundred and fifty four million dollars.

00:10:14Nineteen makes one hundred and forty nine million dollars.

00:10:17And then, of course, Covid hits.

00:10:19And that's really when the wheels fall off.

00:10:21And particularly at his hospitality property.

00:10:24So we're talking about his hotel in Chicago, his hotel in Washington, D.C.

00:10:29his resorts in Scotland and in Ireland and Doral, his golf resort down in Miami.

00:10:34All of those properties really start to struggle.

00:10:37You see massive losses, you know, millions of dollars a year where he's having to

00:10:41inject money to keep these things afloat.

00:10:44And meanwhile, his office buildings, which although they've struggled long term from

00:10:48Covid in the short term, actually sort of propped him up because remember, he has a

00:10:53bunch of big companies renting from him.

00:10:54And those big companies continue to pay their rents, even though they might not be very

00:10:59happy about the fact that they're locked in a five, 10 year long leases.

00:11:02They're still going to pay him in the short term.

00:11:04So that really kept the business afloat.

00:11:06But overall, his profits dropped to one hundred and eleven million dollars in 2020,

00:11:10which is his final full year in the White House.

00:11:13During his time as president, he was an extremely polarizing figure.

00:11:17I mean, he still is. But during his time as commander in chief, did the nature of his

00:11:23divisiveness, did that impact his income?

00:11:26It absolutely did. So, you know, his licensing businesses, not just his product

00:11:32licensing business, which was sort of the ties, shirts, that sort of stuff, totally went

00:11:36away. Nobody who's selling a consumer product wants to be associated with a brand that

00:11:41now is going to turn off 50 percent of its customers.

00:11:44So those product licensing partnerships all dissipated.

00:11:48Then you have the real estate licensing deals, and those ones were sort of a mixed bag.

00:11:52But over time, many of them went away.

00:11:55So as people got close to the end of their contracts or they just decided, you know

00:11:59what, this is really hurting us year after year.

00:12:02In many cases, you saw buyouts.

00:12:04So in Soho and Manhattan, in Toronto, you see these huge sort of lump payments land all

00:12:11at once while Trump is president, which is nice.

00:12:14He gets a bunch of money in one moment, but then they go to zero the next year or near

00:12:18zero. So you have those sort of licensing businesses all begin to fade away.

00:12:22Now, you also had in some of his office buildings, you know, some tenants who

00:12:27particularly like after January 6th were saying, you know, I don't want to be connected

00:12:31with this guy. I want to be out of these buildings.

00:12:33But overall, in those situations, people were much less able to move out.

00:12:39And also, you know, if you're renting space in 1290 Avenue in the Americas, which is a

00:12:44building in which Trump owns a 30 percent stake, you know, most people coming into their

00:12:48law firm office in that building aren't thinking about Donald Trump.

00:12:52His name's not on the front of the building.

00:12:54And so he sort of does OK.

00:12:56So those businesses that aren't branded, namely 1290 Avenue in the Americas and 555

00:13:01California Street, were really some of the standout strong businesses during his

00:13:07presidency, even as some of the ones that were more closely tied to his name began to

00:13:11struggle. To your point, in your piece, you named one section, 2018,

00:13:18no name, no problem.

00:13:20So financially for him, when his name's not slapped on a building, he fares better.

00:13:25Yeah, I mean, in any portfolio, you won't have diversification.

00:13:29In Trump's portfolio, he was very heavy on his own name.

00:13:34And but he did have a couple of key assets, 1290 Avenue in the Americas in New York

00:13:38City, 555 California Street in San Francisco, in which he only owns 30 percent stakes.

00:13:44And therefore, his partner is in control of those deals.

00:13:47This is Bornado Realty Trust, a publicly traded company, and he doesn't have his name

00:13:51on that provided diversification for him.

00:13:54As many people were saying, we don't want to have anything to do with Trump or even if

00:13:59they aren't, you know, Democrats and people who dislike Trump, they might still say, you

00:14:04know what, do we really want to hold our, I don't know, cardboard box conference at

00:14:11Trump National Doral, where there's a good chance that some of the people that we are

00:14:14going to be inviting are going to be offended by the venue.

00:14:17No, let's just host it at a different one instead.

00:14:20And so you have people fading away from those properties in a way that's really, really

00:14:25harmful to Trump.

00:14:27But then, as you say, you have other ones that people don't even know he owns.

00:14:30And in those cases, he tended to perform just fine.

00:14:35As he reported, he made over half a billion dollars during his four years as president.

00:14:39Is there any indication as of now of what he did with that money?

00:14:44Well, he had to, you know, pay his debts.

00:14:47He had to pay his employees.

00:14:50He had to pay his kids and he had to live really well.

00:14:53So remember, he still owns several private aircraft.

00:14:58He owns mansions in places like St.

00:15:00Martin and upstate New York.

00:15:02And although he sold a couple of them, for instance, his one in Los Angeles, you know,

00:15:05he still owns significant amounts of personal property.

00:15:08All of that is really expensive.

00:15:11And so it's not like he made five hundred and fifty million dollars and it all went

00:15:16straight into his bank account and he's kept it the whole time.

00:15:20He has an expensive lifestyle and his business is expensive to run.

00:15:23And so much of that money went toward paying off debts and living large.

00:15:28During his presidency, he did make a show of donating his salary each year.

00:15:34Is there any indication of how that impacted his bottom line?

00:15:38It's a non-factor.

00:15:40You know, that was purely a PR stunt.

00:15:43Four hundred thousand dollars, whether he keeps it or doesn't keep it, doesn't matter

00:15:46to him. Even over four years, that's one point six million dollars.

00:15:50Pure rounding error in terms of five hundred and fifty million dollars coming into his

00:15:56business. So it didn't matter each way.

00:15:59He made the decision to say I wasn't going to take it or I was going to donate it.

00:16:03He got a lot of coverage out of big checks that he wrote to various places and

00:16:09certainly a lot of people thought he was super generous for doing so.

00:16:12But, you know, it's the equivalent of finding coins in your in your couch and

00:16:16figuring out whether you want to, you know, give them to your kid or keep them

00:16:19yourself. I mean, it just it doesn't matter.

00:16:23As we know right now, he is running for president yet again.

00:16:27Let's say he does win in November.

00:16:28Is there any indication of what he's going to do with his businesses this time

00:16:32around? Well, certainly if history is an indication, he will hang on to them.

00:16:37And now, of course, he's going to be going into office this time with a new

00:16:43business, too, which is Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of

00:16:46True Social, the Twitter knockoff that Trump started after he was banned from

00:16:50Twitter in the wake of the January 6th riot.

00:16:53So that's going to add a whole nother dimension because, you know, he came into

00:16:57office the first time with a set of businesses that weren't going to benefit

00:17:03from polarization.

00:17:05One of the few businesses that consistently benefits from polarization is social

00:17:10media. And now he's going to own a social media company.

00:17:13So for him to make, you know, outlandish statements or do bombastic things or

00:17:19whatever is actually going to be helpful in driving engagement to True Social.

00:17:25And so he'll have a financial incentive to do so.

00:17:28Now, that being said, True Social is a tiny business.

00:17:32It, you know, takes in very little revenue, makes no money, but investors are

00:17:36really excited about it. And so he might want to do things to keep them excited

00:17:42about it. And then that's in addition to, of course, all of the businesses that he

00:17:46had before and all of the potential issues that come there, whether it's, you

00:17:50know, pressuring J-PAL to change interest rates or, you know, giving benefits to

00:17:56tenants of his office buildings or, you know, dealing with foreign countries who

00:18:02have impact on his foreign licensing businesses.

00:18:06So all of those things are going to presumably come back into the White House in

00:18:10addition to the social media company the next time if he's able to win.

00:18:15Dan Alexander, per usual, I appreciate your reporting.

00:18:18Thanks for coming on.

00:18:20Sure thing. Thanks for having me.

00:18:21Hi, everybody.

00:18:22I'm Brittany Lewis, a reporter here at Forbes.

00:18:25Joining me now is my Forbes colleague, staff writer Zach Everson.

00:18:28Zach, thanks so much for coming on.

00:18:31Thanks for having me on again, Brittany.

00:18:32Appreciate it.

00:18:33You have some reporting on the profits of Trump's Mar-a-Lago since he left the

00:18:37White House. But I do want to take a step back and start at the beginning here.

00:18:41In your piece, you call the Palm Beach Resort one of his, quote, best real estate

00:18:46investments. How so?

00:18:48Yeah, it's it's doing really well.

00:18:49He bought it for about 10 million dollars back in around the mid 80s, and we most

00:18:55recently valued it at three hundred twenty five million.

00:18:58So, you know, that's a solid profit margin there.

00:19:01So at the beginning and its inception, was it always a successful property or with

00:19:06the moment when Trump entered politics, did it catapult into that semi household

00:19:11name?

00:19:11I would use the word middling.

00:19:13It seemed like it was doing OK.

00:19:15You know, it wasn't a money loser.

00:19:16I'm sure he had bigger.

00:19:17He had better, better businesses out there, but he certainly had worse.

00:19:22You know, one of the things I looked at when reporting this was just how many

00:19:25times it appeared in news articles in a given year.

00:19:29And at first it was, you know, a few hundred, maybe fifteen hundred or so.

00:19:32And then it certainly exploded to, you know, after he left the White House.

00:19:36And then it exploded to, you know, after he left the White House.

00:19:38And then it certainly exploded to, you know, after he was elected, where it got to

00:19:43be up to ten thousand in a year.

00:19:45And that's that's according to LexisNexis, which is as high as it showed.

00:19:48So it certainly picked up and it got a lot more attention once he was in office.

00:19:52I think it's fair to say that Donald Trump was really a polarizing figure once he was

00:19:57in office.

00:19:57And Forbes has previously reported that that really impacted his bottom line.

00:20:03Mar-a-Lago was dubbed the winter White House.

00:20:05Was it doing well during the Trump presidency?

00:20:09Yeah.

00:20:09Yes, it was.

00:20:10It was doing better than it had been before, you know, calling him divisive is the polite

00:20:14way of putting it.

00:20:16But it did well.

00:20:17It, you know, wasn't nearly as well as doing as strong as what we're seeing now, but it

00:20:22was certainly an uptick.

00:20:23We saw revenue, you know, in 2016 was his first year.

00:20:28There was twenty one thousand dollars and that was up 17 percent from where it was the

00:20:31previous year, which in turn 2015, which in turn was up 17 percent from the year before

00:20:37that.

00:20:37So he'd had some steady growth there once he wrote down that that golden escalator and

00:20:43into the presidential campaign.

00:20:45But you're reporting that post Trump presidency profits Mar-a-Lago have quadrupled since he

00:20:51left the White House.

00:20:52How so?

00:20:54Yeah, so it went down a little bit towards the end of his presidency due to covid, although

00:20:58it was still better than it had done beforehand.

00:21:00But then ever since he left office and has been there a sizable amount of the time, it

00:21:05is shot up in twenty twenty one.

00:21:08It was up forty five percent the following year.

00:21:11It was thirty five percent.

00:21:12And then twenty twenty three leveled off a little bit.

00:21:16It was up six percent.

00:21:17The revenue that year was about forty million dollars.

00:21:19So looking at the time frame we started looking at, it was 2011.

00:21:23Revenue there was 15 excuse me, 15 million dollars.

00:21:26Most recently in twenty twenty three.

00:21:28The last year we have data for it was 40 million.

00:21:31So a sizable jump right there.

00:21:33That is a sizable jump.

00:21:34And is that surprising?

00:21:35Because given that most Americans have a strong opinion about him either one way or the other.

00:21:42He doesn't need a lot of Americans to like him for this business to succeed.

00:21:47It is capped at five hundred membership members due to the land use agreement he signed with

00:21:53the county back twenty or thirty years ago.

00:21:55So all he needs is five hundred people who are willing to pay.

00:21:58And clearly that is demand for those spots has risen.

00:22:02Originally, before he was in the White House, it was one hundred thousand dollars was the

00:22:06initiation fee.

00:22:07Most recently, it's seven hundred thousand.

00:22:10And the manager recently told Bloomberg that in October it is going to jump to a million.

00:22:15Although at this point, they actually just filled up all of their vacancies and they

00:22:19don't have that.

00:22:19So they have a waitlist right now.

00:22:20So we've seen that increase tenfold in eight years there.

00:22:25So initiation fees, one hundred thousand dollars to seven hundred thousand dollars,

00:22:29potentially a million.

00:22:30Is that the reason this business is doing so much better or are the events doing as

00:22:35well?

00:22:36Give us some insight there.

00:22:39It's a lot of things.

00:22:40For starters, the initiation fees are pure profit.

00:22:43I mean, that is just money that goes straight to the bottom line.

00:22:45So, you know, when he signed up, he had four vacancies this year.

00:22:48They all came in at seven hundred thousand.

00:22:51That's two point eight million dollars right there that they got for not doing anything

00:22:55to boost their conference.

00:22:57So, yeah, that certainly helps.

00:22:59There is a waitlist for our seven, not a waitlist, but there's you need to book an event there

00:23:04about a year out.

00:23:05And now, you know, events aren't open to anybody.

00:23:07You have to have a member invite you to have an event.

00:23:09But somebody who's had events there in the past told me that it's about a year out that

00:23:14you need to book some space there.

00:23:16So that seems to be doing really well.

00:23:18What's interesting is that the money he's getting from political campaigns, while certainly,

00:23:24you know, full of potential conflicts, isn't really doing a ton of business for Mar-a-Lago

00:23:30at its highest.

00:23:31It only drove about three percent of the revenue in a given year.

00:23:35That said, there are probably other people who are joining Mar-a-Lago or members who

00:23:39keep coming back more often just to see all the politicians who are hanging out there,

00:23:43though.

00:23:44You mentioned that you had a conversation with someone who hosted an event there.

00:23:48What else did you learn from that conversation?

00:23:50And what is the value of hosting an event at Mar-a-Lago?

00:23:55So I spoke with Joni Bryan.

00:23:57She is the founder of the 917 Society.

00:24:00That's a group that tries to raise awareness of the Constitution in schools by delivering

00:24:05pocket-sized constitutions.

00:24:08She's had several events there over the past few years, all since Trump left office.

00:24:12Her first one was in 2021.

00:24:15She said, you know, it is more expensive to have events there than where she usually

00:24:18would have them.

00:24:19She's based out in Nashville, but she said the payoff is greater.

00:24:23They can charge more for tickets because Mar-a-Lago is a place you can't really go to every

00:24:27day, and people are interested in going there.

00:24:30And you're also going to get your cause in front of some higher profile people.

00:24:34This did not make it into the piece, but she mentioned to me that at one of the events,

00:24:39there was somebody from Broward County who was on the school committee who was

00:24:43able to get her organization delivering pocket-sized constitutions to middle

00:24:48schoolers in Broward County.

00:24:49And that was from a connection that was made at Mar-a-Lago.

00:24:53You mentioned this in your piece, but after January 6th, Donald Trump went to Mar-a-Lago

00:24:59and he was, you know, cast aside.

00:25:01People didn't really know what to make of Donald Trump after that.

00:25:04Then Kevin McCarthy went down there and visited him.

00:25:07And then he was welcomed back into the fold.

00:25:10And we all know how the past three years have played out there.

00:25:13But who are some of those other big names visiting the resort?

00:25:20Well, we've had foreign leaders.

00:25:22You've seen Viktor Orban from Hungary, Netanyahu from Israel.

00:25:26You're seeing Republican politicians going down there regularly.

00:25:30You know, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, or some people have spotted there.

00:25:34And then you're seeing some far right characters such as Jack Posobiec, who's one of the

00:25:38online conspiracy slingers who was responsible for spreading the Pizzagate conspiracy.

00:25:44So you're seeing a lot of those types down there.

00:25:47One thing that's different is that you're seeing more people there in the summer

00:25:50than previously.

00:25:51Trump's campaign is based in Palm Beach.

00:25:54You know, it's not up here in the D.C. area again.

00:25:57And he's spending a lot more time there.

00:25:58So while the club is closed for the summer as usual, you are still seeing some people

00:26:03calling on him there, which is keeping the club in the spotlight a little bit.

00:26:07So when you're looking at the profits of 2024, how is Mar-a-Lago doing this year?

00:26:14I think it's going to do pretty well.

00:26:17We've already seen and again, this is a small part of its revenue.

00:26:21But if spending from political groups that are registered with the Federal Election Commission

00:26:26have already spent a million dollars there, they've almost equaled their high.

00:26:31And this is only halfway through the year.

00:26:34They're estimating, you know, it's full capacity and membership.

00:26:38So, as I mentioned earlier, it also has a pretty significant weight if you want to book

00:26:43an event.

00:26:44And looking at social media, there's been an absolutely steady influx of events that

00:26:49are being held there, weddings, nonprofit events.

00:26:52So I would suspect that we're going to see revenue along the lines of what we saw last

00:26:57year in the $40 million range.

00:27:00Zach Everson, per usual, thanks for your reporting.

00:27:03I appreciate the conversation.

00:27:06Per usual.

00:27:06Thank you for having me.

00:27:10Hi, everybody.

00:27:11I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes.

00:27:14Joining me now is my colleague, Forbes staff writer Zach Everson.

00:27:18Zach, thanks so much for coming on.

00:27:20Thanks for having me out again, Brittany.

00:27:21Appreciate it.

00:27:22You have an interesting story for us about Donald Trump.

00:27:26It's how Trump lost millions on his D.C. hotel years after he sold it.

00:27:31So first, if you could give us the origin story here.

00:27:34How did he acquire this property in the first place?

00:27:38Oh, boy.

00:27:38So we're going way back to around 2012, where Trump won a competitive process from the U.S.

00:27:45government to redevelop the old post office in D.C., which is on Pennsylvania Avenue,

00:27:50a couple of blocks from the White House.

00:27:51There's a beautiful big building that had kind of fallen into hard times.

00:27:56It was like a downmarket food court.

00:27:58And you know what?

00:27:59I have friends come and visit me in D.C.

00:28:00They drive by and say, what's that building?

00:28:02And I'm like, don't worry about it.

00:28:03Don't get excited.

00:28:04It's not much on the inside.

00:28:06Trump won the government contract to turn that into a hotel, beating out a bunch of other

00:28:13competitors, including one that involved Hilton.

00:28:16And he committed to invest $200 million in renovating the hotel, which he did spend.

00:28:23And honestly, it looks beautiful both inside and out.

00:28:26And then he also committed to a 60-year lease of paying the U.S.

00:28:31government through the GSA $250,000 a month.

00:28:36So that is how he came into it.

00:28:38The hotel opened in 2016, just a couple of weeks before Trump was elected.

00:28:44I know that you said Hilton.

00:28:46Hilton actually tried to stop him.

00:28:48Can you talk about their plan and what they did?

00:28:51It ultimately failed.

00:28:52But give us some details there.

00:28:54Yeah.

00:28:54So this consortium that included Hilton Worldwide, which planned to turn the hotel into a Waldorf

00:28:59Astoria, which is one of the main luxury hotel brands that D.C. did not have.

00:29:03You know, we have Four Seasons.

00:29:04We have several Ritz-Carlton's.

00:29:06There's a St. Regis.

00:29:08They wanted to open that as a Waldorf Astoria, and they protested the decision to award the

00:29:14contract to Trump, saying that the General Services Administration just looked at who

00:29:20was going to pay the highest rent.

00:29:22They said that they did not – it didn't seem like GSA properly vetted Mr. Trump.

00:29:29And to make sure that GSA did have the information that needed, they provided pages upon pages

00:29:35of news clippings of the times that Donald Trump had taken hotels into bankruptcy, that

00:29:41projects he started didn't come to fruition, that he stiffed creditors.

00:29:45But the GSA contracting official said on a technicality that there was no actual way

00:29:53for Hilton to appeal that decision.

00:29:56And so Trump went ahead and did open that as a hotel.

00:30:00Well, did Donald Trump have enough money to buy it in the first place?

00:30:06That was part of Hilton's – Hilton said he did not have enough money.

00:30:09He would not be able to afford it, was the main part of their objection, in that the

00:30:14revenue that he would need to bring in to offset the $200 million he was going to spend

00:30:20on renovating it was just way out of line with what the DC luxury market could handle.

00:30:28GSA said they looked at the financials and they thought it was fine.

00:30:31And as we're talking about this years later, it was clear that Hilton was correct and GSA

00:30:36was wrong.

00:30:37But before it was clear that Hilton was right, it did open about two weeks before the election

00:30:44in 2016.

00:30:46So it was open, then Donald Trump wins.

00:30:48Did the hotel benefit financially from Trump being president?

00:30:54It's tough to say definitively.

00:30:56It definitely brought in revenue that it wouldn't have received otherwise.

00:30:59I mean, there was no shortage of Republican groups flocking to spend money there.

00:31:04I think there were like 220 different payments to the DC – Trump's DC hotel in the first

00:31:1114 months it was open, just looking through campaign filings with the FEC.

00:31:16You would find all sorts of senators, congressmen, more than half of the people who served in his

00:31:21administration were there.

00:31:23There was a diplomat famously told the Washington Post that, of course, you'd go there.

00:31:28You want to be seen there and you want to let the president know that you went to his

00:31:31business.

00:31:32Now, the downside of that was you barely saw any Democrats there.

00:31:37You did not see much spending.

00:31:38I think Joe Manchin was the only elected Democratic member of Congress that I spotted

00:31:43there.

00:31:44But, you know, it did scare away a lot of people.

00:31:46It looks like the hotel did pretty well on food and beverage from events and from

00:31:53restaurants in the lobby.

00:31:55But the room rates, people just weren't booking those rooms.

00:31:59So Hilton's prediction ultimately comes true, you're reporting.

00:32:03So how did the hotel's actual revenue compare to what the Trump organization

00:32:07estimated it would be in order to get the contract?

00:32:11It was significantly below.

00:32:14You know, in 2017, the revenue was $52 million.

00:32:17That's $35 million less than what the Trump organization projected.

00:32:22And we got a lot of these documents through the New York attorney general's recent civil

00:32:26case against Trump.

00:32:27And revenue stayed pretty flat the following years, $53 million in 2018, $52 million in

00:32:332019.

00:32:35And then obviously the pandemic hit, which is not Trump's fault by any stretch, at least

00:32:39in terms of business on his hotel.

00:32:41But then revenue plummeted 60 percent.

00:32:43And it was shortly after he left that he dumped the hotel.

00:32:48So the revenue wasn't meeting the actual projections.

00:32:50So talk to us about Trump's journey in trying to sell this hotel.

00:32:55So he first floated it on the market in 2019, according to a report from CNBC.

00:33:00He was asking $500 million, which a lot of industry experts seemed preposterous.

00:33:07Apparently, a lot of would-be hotelers also agreed.

00:33:10He did not get a bid anywhere near that.

00:33:12In fact, a lot of them even came in at less than half of what he was asking.

00:33:16So he took it off the market and then came back and put it up again in 2021 when he was

00:33:22out of office.

00:33:23And this time he did find a buyer, someone who was willing to pay $370 million to own

00:33:29the lease to the hotel.

00:33:31So talk to us about that, because you described the move as lucky in your piece.

00:33:37So talk to us about the buyer and how they struck up this deal.

00:33:40And what were the details of it?

00:33:43Sure.

00:33:44The buyer was a group called CGI Merchant Group.

00:33:47They are based out of Florida.

00:33:49And I mean, to be blunt, they overpaid.

00:33:51You know, somehow Trump was able to find a group to pay a lot more than what everybody

00:33:56else thought that lease was worth.

00:33:58You know, it was a money loser.

00:34:00So he clearly lucked out there and was able to walk away with $120 million payday when

00:34:06the deal did, in fact, go through.

00:34:08That was what we learned later, is that for the deal to happen, he had to provide a loan

00:34:14to CGI Merchant Group.

00:34:16It didn't have enough money to pay for some of the taxes involved in the transaction.

00:34:21Now, I'm not a real estate developer.

00:34:25I'm a journalist in a rented house.

00:34:28But to me, that's just a red flag.

00:34:30If you're closing, if somebody's buying this hotel and they don't actually have enough

00:34:34money to cover all the fees up front.

00:34:36So anyways, Trump loaned them the money that they needed, $28 million or so, and they failed

00:34:44to pay it when it was they failed to make the first payment.

00:34:47They failed to make two additional payments.

00:34:48They had to keep amending the loan.

00:34:50And so in June, Trump took them to court filing that he had only received $100,000 of this

00:34:58$28 million loan at that point.

00:35:01So now at this point, present day, how much does CGI owe Trump?

00:35:06And is he ever going to see that money again?

00:35:09He's claiming it's $31.5 million plus interest that's accruing as this case goes through

00:35:15the courts.

00:35:17It doesn't seem likely that he's going to see this money.

00:35:19What happened is that CGI didn't just fail to pay Trump.

00:35:24It also failed to pay its main lender for the building, which is a group called BDT

00:35:29and MSD Partners, which is a merchant bank connected with Michael Dell.

00:35:34And it failed to pay.

00:35:36It financed most of the $375 million from them.

00:35:39It failed to pay them.

00:35:42The BDT and MSD gave them a couple of chances to renegotiate or get a little extra time

00:35:49to make some payments.

00:35:50That didn't happen.

00:35:52And then the lender ended up foreclosing on the property and took ownership of it back

00:35:58in August.

00:36:00So what's interesting here, though, is that when Trump sold it to CGI, they worked with

00:36:07Waldorf Astoria.

00:36:09You remember Hilton Worldwide?

00:36:10They worked with Hilton Worldwide to go make it into a Waldorf Astoria.

00:36:13And now the new owners are keeping it as a Waldorf Astoria.

00:36:16So we've had three leaseholders of this hotel in less than three years.

00:36:23Waldorf Astoria is now the one running it.

00:36:25I reached out saying, hey, do you still think this lease is financially unsound?

00:36:29And they sent me back some corporate speak and did not address that question.

00:36:33So the property is still a Waldorf Astoria.

00:36:36Talk to us a little bit about it.

00:36:38Is it still functioning?

00:36:40And what does that lease look like?

00:36:42And is this financially sound?

00:36:44The lease is the same.

00:36:46No one else bid on it when it went up to auction.

00:36:48According to the auctioneer, BDT MSD paid, I think it was $100 million for it.

00:36:54They're keeping it as a Waldorf.

00:36:56I don't understand how they're going to make it work when the previous two owners did not.

00:37:02It's a functioning Waldorf.

00:37:03It's very nice.

00:37:04I went there Sunday.

00:37:05I had a lovely salad with some salmon.

00:37:07And the hotel looks very much the same.

00:37:10They added some greenery to it.

00:37:13But if you look at political patrons, you're going to find campaigns like Nancy Pelosi

00:37:20have been going there.

00:37:21But by and large, it looked the same.

00:37:23And I think going back, I think Trump did a very good job renovating that hotel.

00:37:27And if you're just a customer going there, you're not necessarily going to notice the

00:37:30difference at all.

00:37:31I don't think you will.

00:37:32The level of service there was fantastic.

00:37:34Exactly what you'd expect out of a Waldorf Astoria type hotel.

00:37:37Well, Zach Everson, per usual, thanks for the conversation.

00:37:40Thanks for the reporting.

00:37:42Already looking forward to the next one.

00:37:45My pleasure.

00:37:45Got to go expense that meal at the Waldorf now.

00:37:51Hi, everybody.

00:37:51I'm Brittany Lewis, a reporter here at Forbes.

00:37:54Joining me now is my Forbes colleague, senior editor, Dan Alexander.

00:37:58Dan, thanks so much for joining me.

00:38:02The Forbes 400 list is out.

00:38:04So first, a big congratulations.

00:38:07Second, we are going to be talking about someone who has been on and off the list over the

00:38:12past few years.

00:38:13And that someone is former President Donald Trump.

00:38:16You write for Forbes just how Donald Trump made billions from politics.

00:38:20But if you could take us down memory lane back to January 2021, when it wasn't looking

00:38:25so good for Donald Trump, if he was ever going to jump into politics again, he had just lost

00:38:30the election.

00:38:31We just had those Capitol riots.

00:38:34Biden was being inaugurated.

00:38:35Take us back to that time.

00:38:38Yeah, both politically and financially, he was in a really difficult place.

00:38:43Remember, the country at the time was still struggling with COVID.

00:38:47His hotel businesses had been hemorrhaging money over the last year.

00:38:52His licensing businesses had essentially disappeared.

00:38:55His commercial real estate properties, many of them were having trouble with people just

00:39:01not showing up to work.

00:39:03And so all of a sudden, the demand for those sorts of properties was much less.

00:39:07Fortunately, people were paying rent in the meantime, but the values were way down.

00:39:10So he comes back to the business world really with this kind of broken up, rusted out business

00:39:18that is down by more than a billion dollars from when he got into politics.

00:39:23And then he has to figure out, OK, well, what's next?

00:39:27So talk about that broken down business for us, because how did the Trumps handle their

00:39:33family business while their father was in office?

00:39:37So Donald Trump put his two sons, Don Jr.

00:39:42and Eric, in charge of running the day to day operations.

00:39:46He didn't sell the business.

00:39:48There's some indications that Donald Trump, while he was president, was still involved.

00:39:53But in terms of kind of the day to day stuff, that would have been Eric and Don Jr.

00:39:59with the help of Allen Weisselberg, who was the longtime CFO of the Trump organization,

00:40:04who's now been put in jail twice for financial issues.

00:40:10So those guys were sort of running the day to day.

00:40:14And I talked to Eric about the state of the business in early 2017.

00:40:20And like his dad, he was sort of keeping an upbeat tone, always a salesman.

00:40:24Things are going well.

00:40:25Assets are doing well.

00:40:27And as we look at the financials now, we realize that assets weren't really doing very well.

00:40:33It was a significant hit to the business when Trump became president at the outset.

00:40:40And to Eric's credit, he also conceded that there were some challenges.

00:40:44For instance, he noted that they couldn't expand like they had planned to overseas,

00:40:48which you can see that in the numbers.

00:40:51The licensing and management business, which had been sort of a growing part of the empire,

00:40:56really just sort of dissolves while they're in office.

00:41:00And they're just getting lingering fees from various deals around the world.

00:41:04But they're not doing new deals.

00:41:06They're not getting big checks for signing up new partners or anything like that.

00:41:12So you've got this.

00:41:13The sons really are sort of just watching the company, making sure that it can continue running.

00:41:20But they're not doing major expansions of the Trump organization,

00:41:25not huge developments or large strategic shifts or anything like that,

00:41:29mostly just trying to keep their hands on the steering wheel.

00:41:32And in 2021, we know that the year didn't start off well for Trump, as we talked about earlier.

00:41:37He's out of office.

00:41:39He also, for the first time in 25 years, didn't appear on the Forbes 400 list.

00:41:44So talk to us a little bit about the bounce back financially.

00:41:48So the core of how Donald Trump rebuilt his fortune

00:41:52started about a week after he left office.

00:41:55And he hosted a couple of guys who had once been on The Apprentice to Mar-a-Lago.

00:42:00And they had ice cream, they had hamburgers, and they talked business.

00:42:05And during that meeting, these guys sort of laid out a vision for what Trump could do

00:42:11with his post-presidency in terms of business and saying,

00:42:15you know, what if we created a Trump-branded media and technology company?

00:42:19Think TV, think social media.

00:42:23Remember, this is right after the Capitol riots.

00:42:26And so Trump was banned from Twitter and many of the service providers,

00:42:30online service providers of things like web hosting had booted companies

00:42:34that have been supportive or entities that have been supportive of the Capitol riot.

00:42:38And so they even wanted to do like some web hosting services.

00:42:41So it's all built up around this idea of, you know,

00:42:44we've been ousted both politically and also technologically.

00:42:48And now we're going to build back this business with Trump's name on it

00:42:53to create this sort of conservative ecosystem in tech and media.

00:42:58And the best part of the pitch from Trump's perspective

00:43:02was that according to somebody who was involved with the deal,

00:43:05he didn't have to put up any money, but he got 90% of the company.

00:43:09And so Trump, who at the time didn't have all that much cash,

00:43:13is sitting back saying, well, who knows if this thing is going to work,

00:43:16but it's not going to go terribly for me because I'm not really putting much into it.

00:43:21And so that began this process of creating this company

00:43:25that to this day has not been able to become a successful business,

00:43:31but nonetheless has gotten a lot of people who love Donald Trump very excited about it.

00:43:36And it's gone public and the shares have traded like mad.

00:43:39And Donald Trump's stake is now worth roughly $2 billion in that entity.

00:43:45And that makes up at this point about half of his fortune.

00:43:49So that's how we came back.

00:43:51And for anyone who's covered politics during the Trump presidency,

00:43:55we all know that one tweet from Trump could put the news cycle

00:43:59in a tailspin that could last for days.

00:44:03And then here's Born Truth Social, Trump's very own Twitter.

00:44:07You called Truth Social one of the most absurd businesses in America.

00:44:11Why is that?

00:44:13From a financial standpoint, the numbers make absolutely no sense.

00:44:16This is a company that takes in less than $4 million a year in revenue.

00:44:20They, over the past 12 months, lost hundreds of millions of dollars

00:44:25on a net basis, more than $300 million.

00:44:28And yet people are valuing the thing in billions.

00:44:31So those numbers don't add up.

00:44:34But people aren't valuing it based on the business.

00:44:37People are valuing it based on Trump.

00:44:40This is a proxy for betting on Trump.

00:44:43And that doesn't make any financial sense.

00:44:46But if people are willing to pay whatever they're willing to pay for these shares,

00:44:51then you can get to a really big number.

00:44:54And since Donald Trump owns more of the shares than anybody,

00:44:57it's a huge amount of money for him.

00:44:59If you were to take Donald Trump out of this and, say, present to an economics professor,

00:45:08OK, so you have a business that here are the financials.

00:45:11What do you think this thing is worth?

00:45:13Or if you were to take it to any analyst on Wall Street,

00:45:16most people would laugh you out of the room and say this thing's worth zero.

00:45:20But with Trump, he breeds this immense amount of excitement around it.

00:45:26And that has converted into billions of dollars.

00:45:28And he himself was excited about it.

00:45:31Yet he did not invest much of his own earnings into the business.

00:45:35Why is that?

00:45:38Well, Donald Trump back in the day took a lot of risks.

00:45:41OK, late 80s, early 1990s, borrowed a ton of money from a lot of people,

00:45:47put his own money, what little of it that he had,

00:45:49into huge projects in Atlantic City and in Manhattan.

00:45:53Many of those projects failed.

00:45:55And since then, Trump has become much more reluctant to take huge gambles.

00:46:01And so this was just a continuation of that philosophy that he developed

00:46:05after he was able to survive one of the hardest financial periods of his life.

00:46:11And by not putting in any money, Trump doesn't take any risk.

00:46:15If the thing goes to zero, Trump's basically where he started.

00:46:19But if the thing goes to billions, which is where it is, then that's all gravy for him.

00:46:24And so at this moment, that looks like it might play in Trump's favor,

00:46:30although we'll really see what the effects are when his shares are freed up

00:46:35and he can presumably sell them or leverage against them or somehow get cash out.

00:46:41And then we'll get to see what his final return from this whole venture might be.

00:46:47So after his burger and ice cream meeting, his initial meeting about Truth Social,

00:46:54he then meets Patrick Orlando.

00:46:57Talk to us about that meeting and how the focus shifted there.

00:47:01So Patrick Orlando comes into this as the promoter of a SPAC,

00:47:05which is a special purpose acquisition company.

00:47:08This is a company that's essentially just a pile of cash that's publicly traded.

00:47:12And the way that Trump's business is going to go public is by merging

00:47:15with this already public pile of cash.

00:47:18And that pile of cash will then go into Trump's business

00:47:21and could theoretically be used to build out more platforms.

00:47:25So Patrick Orlando comes to Mar-a-Lago to sign documents in October of 2021

00:47:31that are going to set up this whole merger.

00:47:34And this is going to put nearly $300 million in Trump's business,

00:47:38give it some significant cash to be able to operate.

00:47:43And Trump's excited because he's going to go back to the public markets

00:47:47and potentially get a huge windfall.

00:47:49They meet, they sign the papers, they take pictures in Trump's office,

00:47:52in the different parts of Mar-a-Lago, lots of smiles, lots of fist pumps.

00:47:59Everything seems great.

00:48:01Patrick Orlando is very excited about it.

00:48:05He's talking to his colleagues, holding champagne,

00:48:09saying, you know, I really think that we can build a $100 billion company

00:48:13and this is the team to do it.

00:48:15Ultimately, he was wrong.

00:48:17It was not the team to do it.

00:48:18And he was certainly not the person to be a major part of that team.

00:48:24And talk about just how problematic that SPAC merger was.

00:48:29Well, it runs into all sorts of investigations

00:48:34from the SEC and various other federal authorities.

00:48:38And part of the problem was that, according to the SEC,

00:48:43Patrick Orlando had created this SPAC

00:48:45with the intention of merging it specifically with Trump's company.

00:48:49However, in SEC documents, his SPAC told investors

00:48:54that it had not picked a company that it was going to merge with.

00:48:58And so you have sort of this, what appears to be a pre-baked deal.

00:49:02And that's not allowed.

00:49:03You can't tell investors one thing and actually be doing a different thing.

00:49:07In politics, you can lie in business.

00:49:09With the SEC, much harder.

00:49:12So Patrick Orlando ends up getting fired from his own SPAC.

00:49:17And he's done, the SEC accuses him of fraud.

00:49:22The SEC also has its own issues with the SPAC.

00:49:25And that holds up the merger.

00:49:27This extends well beyond when most SPAC deals are supposed to close.

00:49:33And they keep pushing it back, keep pushing it back.

00:49:36And it ultimately proves very expensive for the SPAC.

00:49:38They have to pay an $18 million fine to the SEC

00:49:42in order to get approval to merge.

00:49:44But then they do.

00:49:45And they make that payment.

00:49:47And they merge.

00:49:49And investors don't care a lick about it.

00:49:51Because everybody is just so excited about the idea

00:49:54that they can bet on Donald Trump in a publicly traded stock.

00:49:58And so they start bidding up these shares to numbers

00:50:02that, from a financial perspective, make zero sense.

00:50:05So talk about those numbers a little bit.

00:50:07Because you've tracked the ebbs and flows, if you will,

00:50:10of the stock prices of Truth Social

00:50:12and how it's impacted Trump's fortune.

00:50:14So talk to us a little bit about that.

00:50:17Sure.

00:50:18So right after the announcement of the SPAC deal with Patrick Orlando,

00:50:24the day after that Mar-a-Lago signing,

00:50:27this becomes public and the shares start trading.

00:50:31And it got off to a little bit of a slow start early in the morning.

00:50:34But by the end of the day, it was up from $10 to $45.

00:50:38And then ultimately surged at its high point to $175 a share.

00:50:42Now, at that point, investors were implying

00:50:46a post-merger valuation of this entity at about $30 billion.

00:50:50This is for a company that didn't really exist.

00:50:53They didn't even have Truth Social at the time.

00:50:55It was just an idea.

00:50:57And you'll remember that Twitter, which was a real company

00:51:01with hundreds of millions of people on it,

00:51:02wasn't even worth all that much more than that at the time.

00:51:06So this made no sense at all.

00:51:10Ultimately, the shares did come down a bit.

00:51:13And what has happened over the years is that

00:51:17as Truth Social gets attention and people talk about it,

00:51:20the shares tend to go up because it's a bet purely on emotion.

00:51:25People have never heard of this thing, hear about it,

00:51:27and they're like, oh, I would love to invest in that.

00:51:29So they go and they buy shares and it moves the stock price up.

00:51:33In those low periods where you hear less about Truth Social,

00:51:37the stock tends to trend downward.

00:51:39And over time, although there have been these massive peaks

00:51:42and low, low valleys, the trend is that things have gone down.

00:51:47And that happened when the two companies actually merged.

00:51:51It went way, way up.

00:51:53Everybody got really excited.

00:51:54At that point, we started valuing Trump's fortune

00:51:57based on these publicly trading shares.

00:52:01It got up to more than $8 billion at one point,

00:52:04which was higher than it had ever been in Donald Trump's entire life.

00:52:08But then it has trended down over time.

00:52:11And so by the time that we locked in the Forbes 400,

00:52:14Trump was worth $4.3 billion,

00:52:16with the majority of that $2.2 billion

00:52:19coming from shares of the Trump Media and Technology Group.

00:52:22It has continued to peter off in a couple of weeks since then.

00:52:26And now, you know, he's roughly at $4 billion,

00:52:30maybe a little bit under.

00:52:32You mentioned earlier in the conversation

00:52:34that if you presented this business to an economist,

00:52:37you would be laughed out of the room.

00:52:38But what does Donald Trump think the value is of this company?

00:52:43Donald Trump sort of showed his hand

00:52:46in one of his financial disclosure reports.

00:52:48So before the two entities merged,

00:52:51he said, and he had to,

00:52:53list what he thought this business was actually worth.

00:52:56And he said that he thought it was worth $5 to $25 million.

00:53:00Now, this is at a time when investors

00:53:02were actively buying shares of the SPAC,

00:53:05implying a multi-billion dollar valuation.

00:53:08And so Trump himself has in a way sort of said to his own investors,

00:53:13what you're doing doesn't make any sense.

00:53:15But of course, he said it in a filing with the government

00:53:18that most people aren't looking at.

00:53:20When he's in front of the TV cameras,

00:53:21he says, this is an amazing business.

00:53:23This is the future.

00:53:24You know, this thing, I'm staying in it.

00:53:27I'm not wanting to sell my shares,

00:53:30you know, which really helps people get excited about it

00:53:33and think that maybe it is actually worth

00:53:36some of these crazy numbers that they're paying.

00:53:39Forbes is reporting that he is now

00:53:42one of the 400 richest Americans.

00:53:45He fell off that list just a few years ago.

00:53:48So from a purely financial perspective here,

00:53:52why would he want to go back to the White House?

00:53:54Because right now he's neck and neck in the polls.

00:53:56He's richer out of office than in office.

00:54:00That's right.

00:54:01Although you have to remember that

00:54:02when he went into the White House the first time,

00:54:05it was sort of a surprise and his fortune

00:54:08wasn't tailored to succeed as president.

00:54:12OK, this is a business that was hotels and real estate.

00:54:16A lot of people aren't going to want to go

00:54:17to your hotels all of a sudden.

00:54:19Well, now he's largely out of the hotel business.

00:54:21So he doesn't have to worry about that as much.

00:54:24You know, he had these big management

00:54:26licensing contracts that went away.

00:54:28Well, most of that, the damage is already done.

00:54:31What he's got now are new management

00:54:33licensing contracts in places like the Middle East,

00:54:35where people might still like it

00:54:38and maybe even like it more when he's president.

00:54:40And then he's got this social media business.

00:54:42Remember, divisiveness is not good for businesses generally.

00:54:46Divisiveness, however, is good for social media businesses.

00:54:49So Trump's fortune is now positioned in a way

00:54:52and has changed enough that being in office now

00:54:56probably will help him,

00:54:58even though the first time he was in office,

00:55:01it didn't help him.

00:55:03Talk to us a little bit about that.

00:55:04And do you think that he will learn lessons of the past

00:55:08because trying to monetize the presidency

00:55:11really backfired on him in his first term?

00:55:16We'll see.

00:55:18Trump plays the same cards over and over again.

00:55:22So we'll see if he has learned various lessons.

00:55:27But there are things that he could do

00:55:29that would be smart business moves.

00:55:31For instance, he could say,

00:55:33hey, look, the first time that I was in office,

00:55:37it was really difficult having this business

00:55:39and having all this attention on it.

00:55:41And I've decided that this time

00:55:42I'm going to divest my business.

00:55:45And that would be a smart financial move

00:55:47because you wouldn't have in the real estate assets,

00:55:49you wouldn't have all the problems

00:55:51that complicated them before.

00:55:53Now, then you've got the social media business.

00:55:56In that business, he could say,

00:55:59well, I'm still going to remain a shareholder,

00:56:04but maybe I need to take a little bit off the table

00:56:07or something like that.

00:56:08And that would be wise of him

00:56:10because it would allow him to presumably cash out

00:56:12at these sky high valuations.

00:56:15What's Trump actually going to do?

00:56:17If he issues any indication,

00:56:18he's not going to do much.

00:56:19He's going to hang on to his assets

00:56:21and see what happens.

00:56:23And it could be that the real estate assets suffer more.

00:56:26It could be that the social media business

00:56:30continues to get people excited,

00:56:32maybe even more excited when he's in office.

00:56:34But all of this is unprecedented.

00:56:36And so we just kind of have to wait and see.

00:56:39Something else that's unprecedented for Donald Trump

00:56:41is certainly the mountain of legal troubles

00:56:43he's facing and has faced in the past year.

00:56:46How are they going to impact his fortune?

00:56:50It's a big problem for him.

00:56:51Donald Trump right now, including interest,

00:56:54owes an estimated $566 million in legal costs.

00:57:01That's due largely to his fraud case in New York,

00:57:05but also the two judgments in E. Jean Carroll cases.

00:57:09It's the woman who accused him of sexual assault

00:57:11in New York years ago.

00:57:14Those two cases have put huge financial strain

00:57:19on Donald Trump.

00:57:20Right now, he has about $413 million in cash

00:57:24by our estimates, which for him would be a ton of money,

00:57:26should give him lots of freedom and flexibility.

00:57:30Instead, those are outweighed

00:57:32by these massive legal liabilities.

00:57:34And although he's appealing the cases,

00:57:37should he lose, he's going to have to hand over the money.

00:57:40And while he's appealing,

00:57:42those are continuing to accrue interest.

00:57:45So millions of dollars every few months

00:57:50are being added to Trump's liabilities

00:57:53because of these lawsuits.

00:57:55And so that's just hanging over him.

00:57:57Now, one area that he could quickly get a lot of cash

00:58:02is the Trump Media and Technology Group.

00:58:04And if he sells shares of this company,

00:58:08suddenly his balance sheet will be in much better shape.

00:58:12And so that's certainly something to look out for.

00:58:16If he sells $200 million of shares,

00:58:19well, he still owns a ton of the company,

00:58:22but now his personal balance sheet

00:58:24has a lot more freedom and flexibility.

00:58:26And that huge weight of those legal costs

00:58:29isn't quite as burdensome as it was.

00:58:31So look out for that in the next few weeks and months.

00:58:35Dan, something that's not so new

00:58:38is rich people running for office,

00:58:40but what makes Donald Trump different?

00:58:44Rich people usually run for office and lose money.

00:58:46And Donald Trump did that and he lost money,

00:58:50but now he's running for office

00:58:52and he's made a ton of money off of it.

00:58:55When Trump left the White House,

00:58:57he comes away with a new asset,

00:58:58which is crowds of people who are willing to buy

00:59:01virtually anything from him at almost any cost.

00:59:06That is NFTs that he's selling,

00:59:08these superhero cards of him flexing his muscles or whatever.

00:59:13That's memberships to Mar-a-Lago,

00:59:15which are getting more and more expensive every single year.

00:59:20They're now going for rumored up to about a million dollars.

00:59:23I mean, these are numbers that don't make any sense

00:59:25to people who are in the club business

00:59:26that somebody would pay for that.

00:59:28But this isn't a typical club

00:59:30and people are willing to pay huge numbers

00:59:32to be a part of Donald Trump's spectacle.

00:59:37It goes to, he just launched these digital coins.

00:59:40He's selling coffee table books

00:59:41full of photos in the public domain.

00:59:44All of these things are, he's selling assets

00:59:48that if you look at them for their intrinsic value,

00:59:51there's not much there,

00:59:53but people are willing to pay

00:59:54huge, huge amounts of money for it.

00:59:56And by doing that, he has more than anybody else

01:00:00at a greater scale than anybody else,

01:00:02converted the presidency and converted politics

01:00:05into a way of profiting.

01:00:09And he's ping-ponged off the list

01:00:10over the past few years, back on it in 2024.

01:00:14Do you think in 2025,

01:00:16whether he wins or loses the White House,

01:00:18we are going to be talking about him now

01:00:20as a member of the Forbes 400?

01:00:24Well, it's a very good question.

01:00:26I think that it's largely dependent on what he does

01:00:28with the shares of the Trump Media and Technology Group.

01:00:31If he sells those shares,

01:00:32he will have locked in huge gains

01:00:35and he wouldn't lose that money.

01:00:38If he hangs onto the shares, as he says he will,

01:00:42this company, the financials of it suggest

01:00:47that it's going to continue to decline.

01:00:50And so he could lose a tremendous amount of money

01:00:53simply by doing nothing.

01:00:56So if he sells the shares,

01:00:58yeah, he could stay on the Forbes 400 forever.

01:01:00If he doesn't, it would not surprise me

01:01:03if he falls off in the near future.

01:01:05Well, Dan, per usual, I appreciate your reporting.

01:01:08Thanks so much for joining me.

01:01:10Thank you, Brittany.

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