Trump Family Business Worth A Fraction Of What President Has Touted
Donald Trump has an inflated view of his assets. The president’s family business is worth about one-tenth of the value he has claimed, according to an analysis of the latest figures he has filed with the federal government.
Some of the discrepancy is due to a downturn in business, but the rest is credited to an overheated imagination, according to Crain’s New York Business reporter Aaron Elstein, who examined the numbers.
Elstein told NPR he feels a bit like he was played.
In 2016 the Trump Organization reported nearly $9.5 billion in revenues. But recent public filings by the president indicate that the company actually earned only as much as $700 million that year, Crain’s said.
Crain’s determined that Trump has been reporting inflated revenue since at least 2010. After examining the latest figures Trump has filed, Crain’s this month bounced the Trump Organization from the No. 3 spot on its list of largest privately held New York City companies down to No. 40.
“It was obviously very important to Donald to have his company on the top of the list ... but the numbers that he presented are just flagrantly untrue,” Elstein told NPR. Crain’s said the $9.5 billion in revenue looks “preposterous in light of federal filings made by the president in the past year.”
Trump’s properties aren’t doing so well, even though it’s “halcyon days” for real estate developers, according to Crain’s. Not only are the Trump Organization’s plans to develop a Soho hotel in Manhattan dead in the water, but “prices are slumping for condos at Trump Tower and the Trump International Hotel and Tower,” Crain’s said.
The average price per square foot for condos at Trump Tower has fallen by 23 percent since 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported, while prices at other midtown developments have remained steady. At Trump’s International Hotel and Tower on Central Park, the average price per square foot is down 24 percent.
And revenue is are down on the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in the Bronx, falling by more than $1.1 million in the past two years, to $5.7 million, Crain’s reported.
Trump also toppled on another list, down an astonishing 92 places (to No. 248), in Forbes’ rankings of richest men in America. But Trump remains a billionaire on the Forbes list, where he clocks in at $3.1 billion in total assets. He also took a dive on Bloomberg’s Billionaires’ list, but is credited with still having a total $2.9 billion in assets, as far as Bloomberg’s knows.
In 2015 Trump boasted: “My massive net worth is in excess of $10 billion.”
Net worth is a subjective “feeling,” Trump said in a 2006 deposition when he sued critical author Timothy O’Brien, who wrote “Trump Nation.” “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings,” he said then.
Since Trump hasn’t released his tax returns, as presidents typically do, his income and information about holdings is murky.
Trump is currently being sued by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for failing to put his business interests into a blind trust.
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AG Sessions Blasts Obama Amnesty: ‘Lawfully,’ DACA ‘Cannot Be Defended’
Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended his ending of a President Obama-created temporary amnesty program for illegal aliens, saying it “cannot be defended” under the Rule of Law.
In a speech to the Federalist Society, Sessions — a pioneer of the immigration in the national interest movement — blasted the Obama administration’s creation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that has given temporary amnesty to nearly 800,000 illegal aliens.
“Similarly, no Cabinet Secretary has the power, through guidance, letters or otherwise, to wipe entire sections of immigration law,” Sessions said. “But that’s what the previous administration did with its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, policy.”
“Under DACA—without the consent of Congress—individuals here illegally who met certain criteria were granted not only lawful presence but work authorization, and the right to participate in Social Security, which unlawful immigrants are not entitled to have,” Sessions continued. “So no matter what one thinks about the immigration issues and policy, it cannot be defended in my opinion lawfully.”
“Once again, the Department advised and the administration put an end to it—and it is being ended now.”
In September, Sessions announced on behalf of President Trump’s administration that the DACA program would officially end in March 2018 and applications for illegal aliens to sign up for the program would end in October 2017.
Most recently, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Elaine Duke directed that the United States Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS) agency reopen the DACA program to allow more than 100 illegal aliens to gain temporary amnesty status before the program is ended. Applicants who can show “individualized proof” of mail delivery problems can reapply for extensions.
Meanwhile, Trump’s nominee to lead DHS, Kirstjen Nielsen, has confirmed that she will proactively work with members of Congress to help push an amnesty for DACA illegal aliens, despite the potential 9.9 million to 19 million chain migration that could follow such a decision and the negative impact it would have on America’s working and middle classes.
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