Mocked as "the hobo's idea of a billionaire"
Rick Wilson, a Florida political consultant who is hardly a fan of Donald Trump, said of him in 2016, "I've had donors say: 'I'm a billionaire. Trump's a clown with a credit card.'" Wilson added, "he is, as someone said, the hobo's idea of a billionaire."1
This portrayal of Trump as a fake billionaire is indeed well-founded, since, for example, Trump:
- lost over $1 billion between 1985 and 1994, more than almost any other US private citizen,
- had four bankruptcies between 1991 and 2004,
- faked his way onto the Forbes 400 richest list in 1984 when his assets were actually $5 million, and
- took a middle-income New York State tax deduction in two quarterly filings in 2016.
See these and other details of Trump's repeated financial failings, and how in 2011, his wildly fluctuating claims of billionaire worth were laughed out of court.
- Huffington Post, "The Scam Behind Donald Trump's Political Rise," August 14, 2016, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-wealth-myth_n_57b09a63e4b007c36e4f1bff.