Manhattan – During an interview with CNBC, the presidential candidate Donald Trump responded to Forbes magazine claiming that his real net worth is only $4.5 billion dollars, less than half the $10 billion stated by the businessman in previous occasions.
In addition to personalities like Megyn Kelly, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, and the news company Fox News, now Trump has added Forbes Magazine to his list of disputes. After the magazine published an article headlined “Trump Exaggerating His Net worth in Presidential Bid” where it stated its calculations on the businessman’s real net worth, the article apparently did not sit well for Donald Trump.
During the interview with John Harwood, Trump was asked about his net worth, to which the Republican presidential candidate responded by asking where he had heard such thing.
“I’m a private company […] I like the people at Forbes but they don’t really know my assets very well,” he said in the interview at Trump Grill as reported by CNBC.
The GOP frontrunner accused Forbes of not measuring accurately the value of his brand, and assured that just after the interview he had plans of signing a new branding worth “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Forbes also presented calculations that suggested Trump is not as liquid as he claims he is, estimating $327 million in cash and equivalents, against the $793 million dollars reported by Trump.
Forbes’ response
Steve Forbes, who is the Editor-in-Chief of the same-named magazine, went on CNBC to defend its magazine’s valuation of Trump net worth by stating the valuation was based on real monetization and value, and not forecasting.
“Well, I think the biggest difference is in terms of how he values his brand. We don’t use brand value in terms of our valuations because we figure if you have some brand value that you’re going to find a way to monetize, but until you do, we don’t count it,” detailed Steve Forbes on CNBC.
Not the first time
Back in 2006, Trump filed a $5 billion lawsuit against Timothy O’Brien for a supposed miscalculation of his net worth in his book Trump Nation. Even though the lawsuit was thrown out three years later, it certainly shows that the topic of its net worth is a sensible one for the presidential candidate.
Source: CNBC