While the ex-president continues to claim he won an election he lost, his real estate company is fibbing at scale on its website.
Visit the Trump Organization’s website, and you’ll find glassy New York skyscrapers, rolling Virginia vines and a shimmering Vegas pool. Alongside all the glamor, there’s hard data—facts and figures about the president’s business. Much of that data, however, is not true.
Consider the statistics about 40 Wall Street. The website calls the skyscraper a “72-story landmarked address.” It’s actually a 63-story building, according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The site says it has 1.3 million square feet of office space. It really has 1.1 million, according to the document.
What The Trump Organization Claims
What The Documents Say
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The website says the president’s hotel in Las Vegas, a golden tower just off the strip, “rises 64 stories high.” It would, if its floors didn’t jump from the eighth level to the 16th level. But since a drawing filed with local officials appears to show them doing just that, the building actually has more like 57 stories.
What The Trump Organization Claims
At Trump's building in Las Vegas, it takes some strange math to get to 64 floors. Above the ground level, there's an office, five floors of parking, a pool, and then—suddenly—the "16th level," according to an architectural drawing (below).
What The Documents Say
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The site says Trump Tower stands “68 stories above Fifth Avenue.” But there are fewer than 65 floors in the building, according to an analysis of documents filed with the SEC and New York City. The site claims the “first 26 floors are comprised of luxury offices,” even though the SEC filing notes just 13 floors of office space.
What The Trump Organization Claims
Lots of buildings skip the 13th floor. But, as an SEC filing (below) shows, Trump Tower skips the sixth through 13th floors, jumping straight from the fifth level to the 14th.
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The inflated figures don’t just appear on the Trump Organization’s website. Pick a major news organization, and there’s a good chance it has amplified Trump’s claims. A brief search turned up examples from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, CBS News and, yes, Forbes. Newsrooms train reporters to get their information from direct sources, which can make it easy to overlook false claims, especially ones involving trivial matters. After all, who would lie about the size of their buildings?
Donald Trump, of course. In fact, he’s been employing such tactics for years. Veteran Trump chronicler Timothy O’Brien called him out for inflating the number of floors in Trump Tower years ago. That didn’t deter Trump. “Truthful hyperbole” is how the former president describes this sort of thing. “I play to people’s fantasies,” he wrote in his 1987 bestseller, Trump: The Art of the Deal. “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.”
It goes beyond typical hyperbole, though. Trump World Tower, for instance, does not have 90 stories. Trump just decided to call the 70th floor the 90th, reasoning in a document filed with local officials that the ceilings were tall enough to justify his miscounting.
What The Trump Organization Claims
The website describes Trump World Tower as a "90-story" building while, on another page, touting its "70-story glass curtain wall facade." It's easy to get confused, given that Trump calls the 70th floor the 90th.
What The Documents Say
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His website says another building in Manhattan, Trump International Hotel & Tower, is 52 stories. But its “52nd floor” appears to really be the 45th. Even the Trump Organization has trouble keeping up with all the contradictory information. In one part of the website, it says Trump National Doral has 700 rooms. In another, it says 643.
What The Trump Organization Claims
The condo declaration for Trump International Hotel & Tower (below) describes how Trump refers to the 16th level of the building as the 23rd, thereby inflating the total number of floors.
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Trump Organization representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Certain statements are more defensible than others. For instance, Trump’s bio describes him as a “dealmaker without peer,” which someone could argue, even though the latest Forbes 400 listed 13 New York real estate tycoons richer than Trump. The site says 40 Wall Street is “directly across” from the New York Stock Exchange, although it’s actually down the block a bit. The site boasts that Trump’s Westchester County golf club is “just 30 minutes from New York City,” which might be true, if you start in New York’s closest borough, the Bronx, and hit very little traffic on the way up north. Or if you take a helicopter.
In addition to all the buildings, Trump’s website includes a page about his aircraft. It features a picture of a black helicopter, complete with a vanity tail number: N76-DT. Nowhere does the page mention that Trump recently sold the asset. Given Trump’s propensity to peddle false information—first as a businessman, then as president, now as a businessman once more—it seems unlikely that all the misstatements will be corrected soon.
What The Trump Organization Claims
The holding company that held the chopper pictured at right on the Trump website recently completed a $900,000 sale, according to a document that the Trump Organization submitted to U.S. officials (below).
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Here Are The Lies Trump Is Now Telling About His Business - Forbes
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