Was Donald Trump “handed $400 million on a silver platter,” as Kamala Harris claimed in Tuesday’s presidential debate?
Trump says no, but turns out, it was actually more than what Harris said.
First, to Trump’s denial:
“I wasn’t given $400 million. I wish I was,” Trump said at the debate, as he set out to repeat a claim he has made consistently over the years.
“I was given a fraction of that, a tiny fraction, and I built it into many, many billions of dollars. Many, many billions. And when people see it, they are even surprised. So, we don’t have to talk about that,” Trump said.
But the truth is, from a New York Times investigation in 2018, that Harris actually underestimated how much money Trump was given by his father, Fred Trump, a real-estate developer.
Video: Donald Trump blows through inherited money
The Times reported, after reviewing more than 100,000 pages of Trump family tax documents, that Fred Trump actually ended up gifting his son, over the years, a total of $413 million, most of that coming through a scheme that included the use of a sham company that used padded invoices to cover outright gifts, and the transfer of his real-estate empire to his adult children at a bargain-basement price.
Through the scheme, Fred Trump was able to hand over more than $1 billion to his children on the proverbial silver platter, and avoid more than $500 million in gift and inheritance taxes in the process.
Even the “very small loan” that Donald Trump has often talked about getting from his father in 1975 turned out to be not “very small” – its value in current dollars comes out at more than $140 million.
To further illustrate the funny money at play in the life of Donald Trump, the Times investigation revealed that the ex-president was, according to financial documents, “earning” $300,000 a year in current dollars at the age of 3, and by the time he graduated college, he was getting $1 million a year from his father.
Contrast this to, I don’t know, how you’re doing, and how much more Kamala Harris is like you than Donald Trump is.
“As it relates to my values, let me tell you, I grew up a middle-class kid raised by a hard-working mother who worked and saved and was able to buy our first home when I was a teenager. The values I bring to the importance of home ownership knowing not everybody got handed $400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times is a value that I bring to my work,” Harris said at the debate Tuesday night.
Oh, yeah, forgot about the six bankruptcies.
You read that right. A guy who was getting $300,000 a year at age 3, got a total of $413 million handed to him from his dad to do with what he pleased, filed for bankruptcy six times.
Four involved casinos, two involved hotels.
The most recent Trump bankruptcy filing was in 2009.
Keep all of this in mind when you’re trying to figure out how to pay your bills at the end of the week.
Rich people play under different rules.
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Chris Graham
