The fact$ catch up to Trump

Two court appearances. One was humilating

Despite his habit of attacking judges, Donald Trump has often gotten lucky in court. Today he got lucky again as a New York appeals court panel gave him a temporary break from a a demand that he post a $454 million bond to cover the penalty assessed after he was found guilty of business fraud. He was required to pay just $175 million. He got a temporary discount but the fact that he had to plead for a lower bond remains a stain on his manufactured image of enormous wealth.

Meanwhile, in another New York courtroom, the judge presiding over the criminal case involving Trump’s hush money payment to cover up affairs during the 2016 election set the date to begin April 15^th.    

Let’s talk first about the criminal trial. In that case, Trump wanted a delay but will be forced to appear before the judge and face the prosecution, in three weeks. This means he may have to pause the ego-boosting rallies he has been holding around the country. He’ll also be forced to hear witnesses describe the scheme to secretly pay porn star Stormy Daniels and nude model Karen McDougal so they wouldn’t talk about having sex with the married Trump. Now, with the 2024 presidential race well underway, the news will be filled with the sordid details. Worse, for Trump, polls have found that a number of his followers have abandon him were he convicted of a crime. In an election bound to be decided by a narrow margin, he cannot afford to lose any of his base supporters.   

Now let’s consider the humiliating fact that Trump, who has always claimed to be super rich, needed a hefty hand on his bond.  

Trump’s identity has always centered on his wealth, He once told a reporter, “Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” Just how beautiful? Well, that depends on the eye of the beholder. In recent years the former president has variously estimated his wealth to be to range from $4 to $12 billion. When the magazine Forbes has considered him for its annual “400 richest” he has often come up way short.    

From the very beginning of the list, in the early 1980s, Trump hectored the magazine over its rankings, which many of the richest Americans scour on the day they are announced. He has posed as a public relations man named “John Barron” to lobby for raising the estimate of his worth, siced his infamous (and now deceased) pit bull lawyer Roy Cohn on the editors, and once showed up at the Forbes offices, unannounced, to argue his case in person.

 The problem for anyone trying to determine the Trump’s wealth starts with the fact that his companies are privately held. Unlike public corporations, that must report their condition to stockholders, the Trump Organization has hardly ever issued a public report. The rare exceptions have involved casinos developed in New jersey, which eventually went bankrupt. (It’s worth noting here that before one of those bankruptcies the state’s casino commission examined the books and found Trump was worth far less than he claimed -- $205 million – and with $19 million, he lacked the cash to stay current on his debt. When Forbes pushed him off the list he retaliated by saying the magazine’s owner Malcolm Forbes, a gay man, had acted out of malice because Trump barred him from bringing young men to the bar in one of his hotels.

The next time anyone got close to making an independent estimate of Trump’s wealth came in 2005 when author Tim O’Brien wrote that Trump was not a billionaire at all. O’Brien estimated his real wealth at between $150 and $250 million. Trump filed a $5 billion suit for defamation and lost, but not before he testified that as a proprietor of companies dependent on his reputation, their value could change based on his mood – positive or negative. In this case, Trump was unable to persuade a judge that his claim even merited a trial.

All in all, Trump has spent his entire adult life trying to convince the world that he’s worth more than he really is. Today marks another moment when the truth caught up to him.