Donald Trump is the world’s greatest businessman, a real estate genius who is so rich that he can coat everything he owns in gold and whose most easily recognizable trait is not his specific hairstyle or the size of his hands, but the enormity of his various secret bank accounts. He’s also a brilliant negotiator who always gets everything he wants while the person he’s making a deal with gets absolutely nothing, but they’re so blinded by his charm and good looks that they don’t even realize or care. At least that’s what we’ve all been led to believe from the great myths and legends about our brave leader, but a report from business news group Crain’s (via The Independent) has revealed some metaphorical cracks in the seemingly perfect facade of Donald Trump and his Trump Organization.
In a reveal that calls into question virtually everything we know about Trump, Crain’s has revealed that his company is significantly less profitable than previously thought, with the Trump Organization dropping in its annual list of the largest privately held businesses in New York from number three to number 40. Last year, the company claimed to have made $9.5 billion in sales, but new numbers that Trump has given to federal regulators reveal that it actually should’ve been somewhere between $600 million and $700 million—a frankly pathetic sum that Donald Trump should be utterly ashamed of.
Of course, this apparent deceit on Trump’s part points toward a larger issue: Can we trust anything he’s said now? If the man is so manipulative and desperate for good press that he would lie about the value of his company to such a ridiculous degree, then what else has he lied about? Is it possible that Trump isn’t even an especially great businessman, but more of a big dummy who sucks at everything?