Poor Donald Trump. To have been president of the US has cost him "two to five billion dollars", he claimed this week. "I would have made a fortune if I just ran my business and I was fine."
Trump said this at his recent cabinet meeting, in a 72-minute monologue, in which he talked all his frustration on the soul while the ministers listened in silence. More than a dozen lies, untruths, and inventions were included in the Washington Post fact-sheets in his talk, and CNN even came in at least 21.
The alleged loss of billions on such lists has a regular place: Trump has often complained about it - although his figures sometimes varied quite a bit.
So he figured his losses in a campaign appearance last August, first with "five billion", a few sentences later, it was "three to five billion." This apparently flexible span was repeated two weeks later after the G7 meeting in France. In September, it was simply "billions of dollars" that he lost, "for the privilege of being your president."
The Fortune
Equally unreliable is the total fortune that Trump has proclaimed for himself over the years. In 2015 he put it to 8.7 billion dollars, but rounded up a little later to ten billion dollars. In contrast, Forbes Magazine, which reviews such data for its list of the richest Americans every year, rated Trump 2015 as "just" $ 4.5 billion, most recently shrinking its asset to $ 3.1 billion, down 1.4% Billion dollars.
But five billion dollars lousy? Impossible, Forbes said, "That's more than it was ever worth."
In truth, nobody knows how rich Trump really is. His holding company, a conglomerate called The Trump Organization, does not publish figures, he keeps his tax declarations secretly. The Democrats now want to force their disclosure in court.
The empire
Trump's corporate network is a single conflict of interest. The financial information to which he is obliged as US President provides a rough insight. Although the details of a tax return are missing, they are also unchecked. But they reveal a thicket of cover companies, real estate, licenses and investments.
The 88-page document from May this year lists hundreds of individual companies of its holding. There are also countless funds, investments, investments and obscure sources of finance with exotic names.
Most of the assets are bundled in the Trump Organization: luxury real estate in the US and seven other states; Luxury hotels in the US, Canada and Panama; Golf clubs and golf courses, a TV production company, merchandising.
The profits
Even as president Trump tries to earn as much as possible. Although he renounces his state salary ($ 400,000) and resigned the group leadership to his sons, but remained owner.
Trump uses every opportunity to promote his properties in speeches, at press conferences, at summit meetings. The most recent example was that he wanted to hold the next G7 summit at his own Doral Golf Hotel in Miami, but withdrew the proposal after allegations that he wanted to benefit financially from his presidency. According to the watchdog group CREW, Trump and other government representatives have visited Trump's real estate almost 1,500 times since 2017 - at a charge. When the Secret Service books, the President earns.
DPA
Trump with China's head of state Xi in Mar-a-Lago (2017): Luxury hotel and leisure residence
For 2018 Trump reported in its financial information revenue of $ 434 million. The largest single item was his private club Mar-a-Lago in Florida with 76 million dollars. His luxury hotel near the White House in Washington also made good profits. Both facilities benefited from domestic and foreign guests.
The US Constitution prohibits the President from accepting or retaining income from abroad. Trump - who has mocked the paragraph in question, the so-called Emolument Clause as "invented" - according to "Washington Post" only a part of this revenue from the Treasury from. The Democrats have sued him for that; the procedure, similar to the disclosure of his tax returns, torments through the instances.
The losses
Despite occasional success stories Trump apparently makes losses. According to a Forbes report from last October, the net operating income of its entire group fell by 27 percent between 2015 and the end of 2017 - partly because of the social polarization of its brand during the presidency. Mar-a-Lago alone, which many politically independent groups avoid as a conference location, reported in its financial information from 2018 a decline in turnover of ten percent compared to 2017.
Several US hotels, which had licensed Trump's name, broke away from the branding and thus disappeared from the balance sheet. A planned Trump hotel chain in Mississippi was not even realized.
The Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue is now, according to the Bloomberg Business Service, "one of Manhattan's most coveted luxury properties." More and more apartments would be empty, purchase prices fell, there was a shortage of business tenants - although Trump's campaign team alone has paid nearly $ 1 million in office space by 2020.
"Trump's presidency remains a net loss business for him," summed up "Forbes." If he had sold his companies instead, as he had promised, he would have been "500 million dollars richer" today.