Donald Trump drops off Forbes 400 list of wealthiest people in the US

 

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Donald Trump drops off Forbes 400 list of wealthiest people in the US

 

He’s $300m shy of the cutoff, according to the magazine, though with an estimated $2.6bn he’s got plenty of pocket change

 

Martin Pengelly in Washington

@MartinPengelly

Wed 4 Oct 2023 19.20 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/04/trump-forbes-400-list-2023-billionaires

 

Donald Trump has dropped off the Forbes 400 ranking of the wealthiest people in the US for the second time in three years, the magazine announced on Wednesday as the former president’s business fraud trial continued in New York.

 

“Donald Trump is no longer rich enough for the country’s most exclusive club,” Forbes said.

 

“With an estimated $2.6bn fortune, he is $300m shy of the cutoff for the Forbes 400 ranking of America’s richest people, the annual measurement that Trump has obsessed over for decades, relentlessly lying to reporters to try to vault himself higher on the list.”

 

According to Forbes, a drop of $600m in Trump’s net worth was mostly down to problems and plummeting value at Truth Social, the social media platform he set up after being ejected from Twitter and Facebook over the January 6 attack on Congress.

 

Trump’s real estate portfolio, on which he built his name before entering politics in 2015, has also suffered.

 

“There is a bright spot in Trump’s portfolio,” the magazine added. “As fewer people spend time in the office, more are goofing off on the golf course.”

 

Business at Trump golf courses has rebounded, Forbes said, after falling during his time in the White House.

 

Valuations of golf courses are, however, among matters under scrutiny in Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York, where the judge has already ruled that the mogul “clearly [made] fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business”.

 

Letitia James, the attorney general of New York state, is seeking $250m and professional penalties against defendants including Trump and his adult sons.

 

Trump, 77, has fallen off the Forbes list before – first in 1990, when his real-estate empire was struggling. He also fell off the list in 2021, in the aftermath of his chaotic presidency and amid the Covid pandemic. He returned to the list in 2022.

 

“Make no mistake,” the magazine said then. “Trump is extremely rich.”

 

A year on, Trump is also in extreme legal trouble. Facing a civil defamation suit arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”, he must also answer 91 criminal charges regarding state and federal election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments.

 

Nonetheless, he retains wide leads in Republican presidential polling and is the overwhelming current favorite to face off against Joe Biden in the 2024 race for the White House.

 

Observers seized on Trump’s latest Forbes reverse for a little schadenfreude.

 

Adam Klasfeld, senior legal correspondent for the Messenger, pointed out that in opening statements in the New York fraud case, counsel for the state attorney general “cited the Forbes billionaires list specifically as one of the motives for Trump inflating his net worth on financial statements”.

 

Harry Litman, a former federal prosecutor turned columnist, said the bad news for Trump contributed to a “portrait of an autocrat in free fall”.