How much is Donald Trump actually worth?

No one really knows how rich Donald Trump is. It has always been assumed and reported that he is a billionaire with properties and golf courses and hotels all over the place, a portfolio that cetainly sounds like he is a man of substance, rich beyond measure. But Letitia "Tish" James, New York attorney general, has been delving into his businesses like a woman obsessed. Her report claiming that Trump and his family inflated everything from the value of properties to the actual size of some of his apartments has been spectacularly revealing. For example, Trump claimed his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida was worth $739 million whereas she stipulated that it was worth a tenth of that. He made his valuation based on the fact that if he sold it all up for residential housing it would be worth that much but he had signed deeds which prohibited his residence from being sold for housing. Then there is his apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan. I love this one. He said it was 30,000sq ft in size but the attorney general said it was actually only 11,000sq ft. This is Trump to a T. When he was president everything he said was peppered with hyperbole. When Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, was making noises about attacking the US, Trump said he would annihilate North Korea if it launched any sort of attack on America. Then he declared the US had bigger and better nuclear weapons than any other country, and, of course, he also claimed he won the 2020 presidential election when the voting numbers said different. So Tish James has her work cut out. Her case against Trump looks well founded but the former president has dismissed it all as a political witch hunt. As usual.