THE 45TH PRESIDENT: A SKY-HIGH LIE
During the campaign, Donald Trump gave Forbes a personal tour of his gilded Manhattan penthouse. Was anything he told us true?
during THE presidential race, Donald Trump left the campaign trail to give us a guided tour of his threestory Trump Tower penthouse. He bragged that people have called his Manhattan home the “best apartment ever built” and emphasized its immense size (33,000 square feet) and value (at least $200 million). “I own the top three floors— the whole floor, times three!” He admitted to having once had a neighbor, pointing to a door on the 66th floor. “I leased that little section to Michael Jackson. I knew him better than anybody.”
Those comments were typical Trump: boastful and inaccurate. We recently dug up New York City records showing he shares those floors with a neighbor and has only partial ownership, some 10,996 square feet. And Jackson’s apartment? Records indicate the area Trump pointed to has never been a residence. It appears to be mechanical space. (Jackson reportedly lived elsewhere—on floor 63.)
No Trump spokesperson would comment on any of this, so using the correct square footage, we estimate the president’s pad is worth $64 million, less than a third of his number.