Donald Trump lies about things big and small, often leaving those around him unsure of the truth. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)
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Donald Trump spent so many years lying about the square footage of his properties that his own company did not even seem sure of their true size. Under oversight from a court-appointed monitor, the Trump Organization recently tried to sort it all out.
“The Trump Organization,” the monitor explained in a letter to a New York judge last month, “conducted a review and assessment of the physical square footage for each of its properties for inclusion in certain financial disclosures. The review sought to ensure consistency in the square footage reporting across the entire Trump Organization and to maintain a clear source of information for use in future disclosures.”
It’s clear how things got mixed up. Donald Trump, for years, claimed that his properties were big, bigger, the biggest. In rare moments, he admitted he was full of it. A lawyer who used to work for Trump, Thomas Wells, once noticed that the number of rooms in the developer’s penthouse was reported differently in various publications—sometimes it had eight, other times 16, or even 30. Wells finally asked Trump how many rooms his home truly contained. The developer’s answer: “However many they will print.”
“Truthful hyperbole,” Trump calls this form of salesmanship, even though there is nothing truthful about it. “I play to people’s fantasies,” he explained in his 1987 bestseller, Trump: The Art of the Deal, itself largely a work of fiction, according to the ghostwriter who penned it. “People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.”
Eventually, hyperbole did hurt Trump. He lied about the square footage of his penthouse for years, telling Forbes and—more importantly—his lenders that it spanned at least 30,000 square feet. In reality, the penthouse measures 10,996 square feet, according to property records. The New York attorney general’s office used that lie, and many others, to build a case that Trump defrauded banks into believing he was richer than he was to score more favorable lending terms.
Trump blamed the penthouse issue—one of the most obvious lies in his yearslong effort to deceive the world about how rich he is—on his underlings. One of them, Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg tried to suggest he had little to do with the calculation. In the middle of his testimony, Forbes published a story explaining how Weisselberg had helped Trump push the lie for years. As word of the story spread, the CFO abruptly ended his testimony, then later admitted to perjury and received a five-month sentence in jail. Trump, for his part, lost the suit and was ordered to pay about a half a billion dollars. As the president appeals, interest accrues—and the monitor keeps looking over his shoulder.
There’s no question who is really at fault for all the misdirection: Donald Trump, a man who has been obsessed with size—whether measured in square footage, crowd attendance or net worth—for years. In 2015, Trump took time away from his whirlwind campaign to lobby three journalists for a higher spot on Forbes’ annual ranking of America’s richest people. Trying to boost the value of the commercial space he owns in Trump Tower, he motioned across Fifth Avenue to the Crown Building, which had recently sold for $1.8 billion. “This is bigger,” Trump said, even though the commercial space is actually 25% smaller—roughly. It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact size of the space because the Trump Organization has submitted such varying figures to tax authorities and lenders over the years, apparently lying about the commercial space just as Trump lied about the penthouse.
The net-worth discussion eventually moved to 40 Wall Street, the president’s tower in Lower Manhattan. Documents filed with local tax authorities said the building contained 1,152,409 square feet one year and 1,162,326 the next. Trump’s lenders reached a similar conclusion, reporting that the building included 1,165,207 square feet in a 2015 prospectus. Rounding up from those figures, a Forbes editor noted to Trump in the 2015 discussion, “You’ve got 1.2 million square feet of office.”
“It’s actually 1.3,” Trump interjected. “By the way, it’s 1.3, to be honest with you.”
It’s hard to stop someone from lying who has done it for decades. Despite the recent review, which the monitor highlighted in her letter, the Trump Organization’s website still lists exaggerated figures for the number of stories in Trump Tower and several other buildings. Among them: 40 Wall Street, the Lower Manhattan skyscraper that has 63 stories and 1.2 million square feet, according to lending and tax records. The Trump Organization’s website still says the property contains 72 stories and—you guessed it—1.3 million square feet.
