Love him or hate him, Donald Trump's persona has been fascinating and confusing for years.
While many details about his businesses and personal life remain tangled in controversy,
some undeniable truths about the 45th President of the United States have been revealed.
Here are some of the false facts about Donald Trump you probably thought were true.
The truth about Trump's net worth is a topic of much debate.
When he announced his presidential run, he estimated his worth at around $10 billion.
As of September 2016, Forbes put that figure at $3.7 billion, while The Washington Post
reported $150 million to $250 million after "subtracting debts and other liabilities."
What can be deduced with a level of relative certainty is how Trump started to accumulate
however much wealth he has.
While campaigning for the Republican nomination, Trump attended a town hall where one attendee
asked him how he got his start.
His response?
"It has not been easy for me.
And you know I started off in Brooklyn, my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars."
Setting aside his somewhat humorous characterization of a $1 million loan as "small," the actual
amount he borrowed over time from his father was around $14 million, which, adjusted for
inflation, would be around $31 million today, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Whether Trump turned that $14 million into $150 million or $10 billion is irrelevant,
because either way, he made a ton of money.
But to posture himself as a struggling entrepreneur is undeniably misleading.
Trying to understand bankruptcy law gets a little tricky, but the fact of the matter
is that out of the 515 businesses that Trump is involved with, only three of his companies
have ever declared bankruptcy, one of which, Trump Entertainment Resorts, did so twice
in five years.
Trump himself has never declared personal bankruptcy, and in an interview with ABC News,
he maintained that what happened to his companies that did file for Chapter 11 was merely "a
fantastic deal" in which he, quote, "used the laws of this country to pare debt."
Fair enough.
Lots of corporations use bankruptcy laws as a way to renegotiate debt and restructure
ownership, but what about the infamous moment during his first debate with Hillary Clinton,
in which he admitted that due to a $916 million net operating loss, he was able to not pay
federal taxes for years?
According to The New York Times, this loss was reported on
Trump's 1995 federal tax return and was a direct result of:
"The financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three
Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed
purchase of The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan."
Trump famously referred to the maneuver as "smart."
Not only did personally losing almost a billion dollars not leave him in financial ruin, but
he found a tax loophole that would help him get back some of those losses, and went on
to become a television star and president of the United States.
"I know all these things, I'm not a baby, I know all these things."
One thing's for sure, it's a touchy subject for the President.
Back in 2011, he agreed to be the subject of a Comedy Central Roast, and according to
HuffPost, producers always ask the star if any topics are out of bounds.
Trump had two: roasters couldn't suggest that he isn't as wealthy as he's publicly claimed,
or make fun of his history of bankruptcies.
While he was still campaigning for the Republican nomination, Trump said at one of the debates,
"I don't have to give you a website because I'm self-funding my campaign.
I'm putting up my own money."
But according to The Washington Post, as of January 2016, not only was most of Trump's
campaign donor-funded, but his website actually did have a "donate" button on its homepage.
According to campaign finance watchdog site, Open Secrets, Trump contributed more than
$56 million dollars to his own campaign, which ultimately raised more than $306 million during
the course of the election process.
Campaign finance is a thorny issue with many complicated facets, and there's arguably not
a reasonable expectation that a candidate wouldn't take donations, it's a way for the
public to be involved in the political process, but everyone can probably agree that using
a cut-and-dry term like "self-funded" only works like this in the arena of politics.
Trump's hair is his defining physical characteristic.
There is no other public figure whose locks have fascinated so many people, and there's
a ton of speculation about whether Trump has hair plugs, a toupe, or some kind of transplant
that only billionaires can afford.
Gawker even did a lengthy and impressively in-depth examination that strongly suggested
Trump was getting non-surgical exclusive treatments called "microcylinder intervention."
However, the article really couldn't prove anything, and if you look at Vanity Fair's
"Illustrated History of Trump's Hair," it's clear he's been swirling and combing his hair
in the same strange way since the '80s.
But still, it could have been fake way back then, right?
According to Trump's former hairdresser, Amy Lasch, the answer is definitively no, that
mind-bending mop on Trump's dome is 100 percent authentic.
In an interview with the Mirror, Lasch said,
"He does it himself.
It is real and it is his hair, he doesn't have plugs."
It's worth noting that Lasch is by no means a Trump loyalist.
She also referred to the president-elect as:
"Flirty...inappropriate, [and] chauvinistic."
So if she had an axe to grind, blowing Trump's cover would have been a power move for the
ages.
Trump's alleged draft dodging has been the subject of many think pieces, including one
Daily Beast article which claims that Paddy McGahn, Trump's lawyer and alleged "fixer"
during his Atlantic City days, used to frequently refer to him as:
"A draft-dodging bastard."
The reality is that Trump did, in fact, register with the Selective Service before receiving
four college deferments, according to Snopes.
College deferments were standard practice at the time, so where did the controversy
and assertion that he evaded military service come from?
According to The New York Times, in 1968, after Trump's fourth and final deferment,
he was once again eligible for the draft.
At this time, the United States was sending troops to Southeast Asia in the ramp-up to
the Vietnam War.
Trump eventually received his "lottery number," like anyone else eligible for the draft, but
it didn't matter, because he'd also secured a "medical deferment" for bone spurs in both
of his heels.
When asked about his condition through the years, Trump had what some view as a muddled
history of responses.
Then there were his arguably clumsy gaffes during the campaign in relation to Senator
John McCain's military service.
"He was a war hero because he was captured.
I like people that weren't captured, okay, I hate to tell you."
As well as his remarks about the Gold Star Khan family….
"If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say, maybe she wasn't
allowed to have anything to say, you tell me, but plenty of people have written that."
Understandably, all of these things put together led to heightened scrutiny of Trump's own
service record.
One of the frequently quoted praises of Trump is that he's a branding genius, which may
seem true, considering his filing to the Federal Election Commission reported that 268 companies
"bear his name," according to The Washington Post.
A closer look reveals that many of the businesses and buildings adorned with his famous golden
Trump logo are merely licensing deals.
NPR found that in some cases, the Trump name is only left behind as a contract stipulation
as part of the sale of a building, which means his name sits on properties he no longer owns.
Then there are his actual brands that represent businesses he does or did own, many of which
have not seen success.
Trump Steaks have been a late night talk show punchline for years.
The Trump Shuttle, also known as Trump Airlines, was a disaster.
He launched Trump Mortgage a year and a half before the housing market crashed.
All three Atlantic City Casinos that bore his name have closed.
And his so-called Trump University had to pay a $25 million settlement over fraud allegations
in a high-profile class action law suit.
While it's remarkable Trump still attempts to trade on his name as the epitome of luxury
and success in the face of so many spectacular failures, it doesn't seem particularly "genius"
to slap your name onto a bunch of duds, especially the casinos.
Trump won the Republican Party the White House for the first time in nearly a decade with
his victory in the 2016 presidential election.
He was something of a dark horse candidate from the start, unlike primary rivals Senator
Ted Cruz and Governor Jeb Bush, Trump boasted no prior governing experience.
As a proud political outsider, The Donald was thus not part of the mainstream GOP establishment.
In fact, he hadn't even been a registered Republican for all that long.
According to PolitiFact, Trump registered as a Republican in 1987, but two years later
switched his affiliation to independent, and for the next 20 years, he donated heavily
to Democratic candidates.
In 2000, Trump ran for president for the first time, winning the California primary, for
the Reform Party.
The following year, Trump filed the paperwork to make himself a Democrat.
In mid-2009, Trump switched for the last time, back to the Republican Party.
Before he was the President of the United States and the host of The Apprentice, Trump
was a New York real estate mogul.
And since that city is the media capital of the Western world, his professional and personal
activities were dutifully reported, making The Donald into a nationally known figure,
as well as one of the most famous businessmen in 1980s America.
In 1987, Trump capitalized on that image and status by publishing The Art of the Deal,
a mixture of a business and negotiation how-to manual and professional manifesto.
The book was wildly successful, spending 13 weeks at Number 1 on The New York Times' bestseller
list, and nearly a year on the chart in total, according to The New Yorker.
The Art of the Deal certainly seems like a very Trumpian image-building, money-making
opportunity, and it was, it just wasn't Trump's idea.
In 1984, GQ published an issue featuring a cover story on Trump, and Si Newhouse, head
of the company that owned GQ's publisher, noticed that newsstand sales were extremely
robust.
Newhouse's conglomerate also owned book publisher Random House, and he reached out to Trump
about writing a full-length book.
After showing the future president a mock-up, freelance writer Tony Schwartz was hired to
shadow Trump and ghostwrite The Art of the Deal.
Trump didn't need a political background to acquaint himself with the national voting
public, he'd already made himself a familiar face by starring on more than a dozen seasons
of the NBC reality series The Apprentice.
Debuting in early 2004, right when reality television was at its most culturally powerful
through competitive sensations like American Idol, Big Brother, and Survivor, The Apprentice
pitted driven professionals against one other, vying for the chance to work for tycoon Trump
in his vast corporate organization.
The show, in which people had to perform business-building tasks each episode, became a top 10 hit for
NBC, and Trump has claimed he personally earned $214 million over the length of the show,
but it wasn't his idea.
The whole endeavor came to Trump like a gift-wrapped package.
Survivor executive producer Mark Burnett pitched the show to Trump, who initially turned down
the idea.
According to The Washington Post, he didn't want to be associated with the world of reality
television, allegedly telling friends,
"[Reality shows were made] for the bottom-feeders of society."
But Burnett eventually convinced Trump that the show could help both promote and brand
the "Trump" name, by featuring the man as the very idea of success itself, and showcasing
Trump properties.
The real estate developer signed on, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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