Topic: Newsmax
When Forbes magazine dropped Donald Trump from its list of the 400 richest Americans in October, Newsmax gave Trump space to whine about it, baselessly calling the magazine "very badly failing" and dismiss the list as a "very dated and discredited 'antique'" and insisting that the magazine is "China-owned" though it's actually owned by a 28-year-old American tech bro. (UPDATE: The sale to the tech bro fell through, which means it's apparently still owned by a Hong Kong-based investment group, which Forbes denies has any ties to China.) But when a different magazine put Trump on its own list of rich people, Newsmax devoted a Nov. 7 article by Lee Barney to gushing over it:
Trump’s fortune has grown by $500 million to $3.1 billion since leaving office in 2021, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bloomberg attributes this primarily to the real estate boom in Florida, which has bolstered two of Trump’s best-known properties, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach and the Doral golf resort in Miami.
In addition, having sold his Washington hotel and paid down loans, Trump has more cash and less debt than at any point in the past decade, according to Bloomberg, which has been estimating Trump’s net worth since 2015.
Actually, Bloomberg didn't make that claim about Trump having "more cash and less debt" -- it simply quoted Eric Trump saying it. Barney then slipped into Trump PR mode, claiming that Bloomberg's estimation of his real estate properties does not take into consideration the impact of the Trump brand on their values, the historical significance of some of the properties," making a particular case for a certain property:
Perhaps the most controversial piece of real estate being dissected in the trial is Trump’s penthouse apartment at Trump Tower, which his company valued at $131.3 million in 2021, and Bloomberg says is worth $40 million today. The court has no estimation.
[...]
Between 2011 and 2016, Trump said his penthouse was 30,000 square feet, but New York state says it is only 10,996 feet.
What the A.G. nor Bloomberg have not admitted is that New York real estate law permits developers and real estate agents to include measurements of common areas of a building, like the basement, elevator shaft, hallways, roof, etc., in an apartment’s square foot calculation.
Plus, if Trump’s penthouse were to go on the market, there would be a premium price for it because of the 45th president’s name. “There would be a Trump premium because the person that would want the property is likely to be a Trump supporter,” says Eli Beracha, director of the Hollo School of Real Estate at Florida International University.
Barney didn't explain how counting hallways and elevator shafts and basements (which, by the way, a penghouse apartment wouldn't even have) equated to tripling the size of Trump's apartment. He concluded by gushing further:
So, while there’s a $1.4 billion differential between Trump’s $4.5 billion claim and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index’s $3.1 billion peg, the index points out reasonable factors why Trump could be worth all that — or far more.
Further, nowhere does the article acknowledge the monumental, game-changing impact Trump has had on real estate, particularly New York real estate, since he began developing it in the 1970s.
Perhaps because what Trump did 40-plus years ago (with the fortune left to him by his father) has little bearing on his current numbers.
WorldNetDaily similarly gushed over Trump's placement on this list in a Nov. 8 article by Bob Unruh that began by rehashing old grievances:
President Donald Trump's corporate worth is an issue now because the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who campaigned on the platform of getting him, is claiming in a civil case he inflated the values of his properties.
She is insisting on $250 million in damages is owed. And she wants the courts to kill Trump's business entities entirely.
udge Arthur Engoron already has ruled there was "fraud," even though there's no evidence of any loan defaults, any complaints from business associates or anything like that.
Further the paperwork involved in Trump's real estate deals included a disclaimer, telling purchasers, or sellers, they should do their own due diligence on property values, which is a standard clause in many contracts.
But now that Engoron, on his own, wildly ruled that Trump's Mar-a-Lago home was worth only about $18 million, drawing dropped jaws and laughter from experts in real estate, a report has appeared with documentation.
But Engoron didn't reach that conclusion "wildly" or "on his own" -- it's the value of Mar-a-Lago for tax assessment purposes. Nevertheless, Unruh went on to cite a report from the right-wing Epoch Times quoting a real estate agent claiming that 'Trump's Mar-a-Lago is worth more than Bloomberg's estimate, and way more than Engoron claimed.'"
