Trump Falls Off Forbes List of America’s 400 Wealthiest People After Truth Social’s Value Tanks
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
As Donald Trump contends with his legal battles and his 2024 campaign, Forbes has determined that the former president is no longer rich enough to make their list of America’s wealthiest people.
The magazine reported that despite Trump “relentlessly lying to reporters” to hype his wealth, his fortune is estimated to be around $2.6 billion — $300 million below the Forbes 400 cutoff. Trump’s net worth was pegged at $3.2 billion a year ago — a decline which Forbes attributed in part to Truth Social, which continues to be a financial bust for him.
Forbes correspondent Dan Alexander noted that sign-ups for the Trump-centric social media platform have only come out to one percent of the user population of X, formerly known as Twitter. He also reported that “Trump’s 90 percent stake in Truth Social’s parent company has plummeted in value from an estimated $730 million to less than $100 million.”
By Alexander’s analysis, this has as much to do with lack of engagement as much as it does with the stalled merger between Trump Media & Technology Group and Digital World Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
From Forbes:
[Trump] pitched Truth Social as a cancel-free antidote to Twitter. Investors, especially mom-and-pop traders, loved the idea. They poured money into a special-purpose-acquisition company that planned to merge with Trump’s business, at one time pushing the implied valuation of the venture above $15 billion. Forbes valued things more conservatively, adding $730 million to Trump’s fortune. That was still enough to put him back on the list of America’s richest people. Two years later, the SPAC deal remains in limbo. 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.
After all, if people are not logging on to Trump’s platform to hear what he has to say now—while he is simultaneously facing a series of indictments and steamrolling the Republican presidential primary—they probably never will.
Trump’s financial decline can also be attributed to losses he has seen with his office buildings — particularly with a San Francisco property in which he holds a 30 percent stake. And future potential setbacks could stem from the $250 million civil fraud lawsuit Trump currently faces in New York, plus his legal bills from the charges related to his four indictments.
