Donald Trump drops from the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. Here's what's changed.
Former President Donald Trump is no longer rich enough to be included in the Forbes 400, an annual ranking of America's wealthiest individuals, Forbes magazine said on Tuesday.
Trump is still a billionaire, with Forbes estimating his net worth at $2.6 billion. But that's down from the magazine's estimate a year earlier that the real estate tycoon was valued at $3.2 billion, which earned him a place on the 2022 rich list.
Trump's estimated net worth of $2.6 billion is $300 million short of the baseline to make the Forbes 400 list. The richest person in America is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, with a net worth of $251 billion, according to the ranking. Many of those on the rich list actually grew their wealth last year, helped by a soaring stock market and other assets that pushed up their combined wealth by $500 billion compared with a year earlier.
Tumbling from the Forbes 400 might seem like a minor problem for someone who is extremely wealthy and running a second time for the highest office in the U.S. But Forbes noted that the Forbes 400 is an "annual measurement that Trump has obsessed over for decades, relentlessly lying to reporters to try to vault himself higher on the list."
The exclusion also comes as Trump is facing a civil fraud trial in New York that accuses him of vastly overrepresenting his wealth and the values of many of his properties.
Trump wasn't the only person to drop off the Forbes 400 list this year. Among those who lost their ranking are Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX, who is currently on trial facing federal fraud and money-laundering charges for his role in the cryptocurrency exchange's collapse; and Snapchat co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, due to their company's stock slump.
Why is Donald Trump off the Forbes 400 list?
Trump fell off this year's list because of Forbes' estimate that his net worth declined by $600 million compared with a year earlier. The culprit? Trump's social media business, Truth Social, Forbes said.
Truth Social has so far failed to live up to Trump's vision for the social media service, which the company had once predicted would top 40 million users this year. But with only three months left in 2023, Forbes estimates that Truth Social has signed up just 6.5 million users — about 1% of the users on X (the platform previously known as Twitter).
In another blow for Truth Social, a deal to take its parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, public has bogged down amid reviews by regulatory agencies.
"If Trump's platform were thriving, he would probably have no trouble finding alternate financing. But it's not, and there is little reason to be optimistic about Truth Social's future," Forbes noted.
Because of Truth Social's growth challenges, Forbes said it lowered the value of its parent company to $100 million, down from $730 million a year ago.
What are Donald Trump's real estate assets worth?
It's not only Trump's fledgling social media service that is losing value, but also his office buildings, which Forbes said have declined in value by $170 million.
Most of that stems from a San Francisco property, 555 California Street, which is 30%-owned by Trump, the magazine said. Leases that generate about half the building's rent are coming up for renewal, but the building is located in a "struggling" area of San Francisco. Neighboring buildings have sold for less than the building cost in 2005, which indicates that 555 California is worth less than it used to be.
Even so, Trump's golf properties are doing well, with revenue at his golf resorts up to almost $150 million, compared with $108 million before the pandemic, the magazine said.
Meanwhile, Trump is facing a $250 million civil lawsuit accusing the former president and others at the Trump Organization of widespread fraud by allegedly providing banks with financial statements that misrepresented his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion.
In a Tuesday post to Truth Social, Trump said the judge in the case "has been given false and grossly misleading information about my Net Worth [sic]." Trump claimed that his Florida club and estate, Mar-a-Lago, is worth $1.5 billion, rather than the $18 million cited by the judge, who was relying on a valuation by the Palm Beach Assessor.
What is Donald Trump's history with the Forbes 400 list?
Donald Trump shared a spot with his father on the very first Forbes 400 list when it was published in 1982, the magazine noted, while adding that his appearance that year wasn't entirely justified.
Trump convinced "a reporter that he held a larger percentage of Fred's fortune than he actually did," Forbes said on Tuesday.
He later fell off the list in 1990, when Forbes declared his net worth "within hailing distance of zero." But Trump rebuilt his wealth and later regained "a legitimate spot" in 1996, remaining on the list until 2021, when he was dropped from the ranks.
In 2022, Trump rejoined the Forbes 400 when the magazine valued his stake in Trump Media & Technology Group at $730 million.