The Cost of the Office? Trump's Billion-Dollar Loss

Money Talking | Oct 5, 2018

Nearly 20 years ago, Donald Trump famously told Fortune magazine that he could run for president and make money doing it.

"It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it," he said in the 2000 interview.

But now that he's president, the story is looking a bit different. A report from Forbes magazine this week concluded that the presidency has not enriched Trump overall: Measuring Trump's net worth before he announced his run for the presidency in 2015 to the last two years, Trump’s fortune has dropped from $4.5 billion to $3.1 billion. 

In a statement to the magazine, Eric Trump, who is co-managing the Trump Organization, said, “My father made a tremendous sacrifice when he left a company that he spent his entire life building to go into politics. Everything he does is for the good" of the American people.

This week on Money Talking, Charlie Herman talks with one of the Forbes reporters who looked into Trump's finances, Dan Alexander, and how Trump could have saved millions (and prevented a lot of headaches as well).

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