By Allan Sloan
They say there are lies, damn lies and statistics. And then there are Donald Trump’s numbers.
Years ago, I had a conversation with Trump that seems especially relevant now.
I remember him telling me that I had gotten an earlier story about him wrong. He said something like, “When I say I’m buying, I’m selling. And when I say I’m selling, I’m buying.” I told him that he had sworn on the heads of his children that what he had previously told me was true. He repeated his mantra, saying I should have known that he was selling when he said he was buying, and buying when he said he’s selling.
So I asked why I should believe a word that he said. Undaunted, he went right on.
That all came back to me when I took a look at the 92-page Trump financial document that the Federal Election Commission released on Wednesday.
I’ve spent more than 40 years making my living by writing about numbers, and I’ve never run across anyone who uses them the way that Trump does. He just spews numbers forth, based on heaven knows what, and people are supposed to take them on faith.
That FEC document has tons and tons of numbers. But it’s hard to figure out what—if anything—they tell you about Trump, other than that he’s got fingers in several hundred pies.
When he filed the document, on July 15, he said that he had a net worth of more than $10 billion, compared with his claim a month ago that he was worth $8.738 billion as of June 30, 2014. He released that net worth summary when he formally declared that he was running for the Republican presidential nomination.
Some of the numbers in that document were more than a little ephemeral. For example, he claimed that “real estate licensing deals, brand and branded developments” were worth $3,320,020,000. I was especially taken with the $20,000 part. What was that 10-digit valuation based on? He wouldn’t say then, and his representatives won’t say now.
Read the rest here.
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