Jamel Toppin for Forbes
Donald Trump has often exaggerated, embellished and even lied about his success and his fortune over the years. Despite being richer than ever, the president still can’t resist hyping himself up, as his recent complaint against The New York Times shows.
Late Monday, Trump filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the Times, Penguin Random House and several of the newspaper’s top writers. The complaint cited a book and three articles that his legal team says damage his business and celebrity image, and alleged that the writers manipulated facts to fit a “desired narrative.”
Trump has his own long history of writing his own desired narrative, as his decades-long relationship with Forbes shows. In 1982, he appeared on the first-ever Forbes 400 list, with a $200 million fortune shared with his father, Fred Trump. “Donald,” we wrote, “claims $500 million.” Never mind the fact that, as later reported by a former Forbes writer, Trump actually owned little of the family real estate empire and only his father should have made the list. By 2015, when Forbes pegged then-candidate Trump’s wealth at $4.5 billion, he insisted he was worth over $10 billion. Now, after ten years in politics, Trump seems to think he’s managed to grow his fortune by at least 10x.
A federal judge dismissed the case on Friday, writing that Trump’s complaint was far too long and far too self-serving. “As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective,” wrote U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday. “A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner.” Trump’s team now has 28 days to refile something much shorter and to the point.
Trump may want to leave out some of his more outlandish claims, not about The New York Times reporting but what he says about himself. The biggest whopper is his “one-of-a-kind” brand that’s worth more than $100 billion; Trump’s lawyers cited as evidence not just his current portfolio of buildings or his Trump memecoins or his Trump hats and towels, but several buildings he built long ago or owns only a small investment in, plus his cameos in Home Alone 2, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Apprentice, which his team claim “marks the cultural magnitude of President Trump’s singular brilliance.”
No doubt Trump’s brand is worth a lot, and Forbes takes it into account in our $7.3 billion estimate of his net worth in several ways. We value the president’s business that licenses the Trump brand to real estate developments, golf courses and other projects at $500 million. We value his $2 billion stake in Truth Social parent company Trump Media & Technology Group—itself more a measure of Trump’s popularity than proof its a billion-dollar business. And we value Trump’s collection of cryptocurrencies, an even clearer bet on Trump’s name value at $338 million from World Liberty Financial and $709 from his memecoins. Add it all up, and it totals more than $3.5 billion. That represents the value of Trump’s stake in these brand businesses. But even if one was to credit Trump for the full value of these ventures—including not just what he owns, but the entire market capitalizations of Truth Social and the memecoins — in essence the value created, not that he owns — it would still total maybe a third of the $100 billion Trump claims.
Trump’s now-dismissed fil