Trump gets hump over 'mere multimillionaire' status

Donald Trump

NEW YORK - The property developer, reality show host and now crusader for truth in reporting, Donald Trump, has filed a US$5 billion ($7.3 billion) lawsuit against a writer who dared to suggest in a book that he is not nearly as rich as he claims.

The suit, filed in a New Jersey court, seems as oversized as the public persona of the man with the bouffant hair and the serial trophy wives.

But it claims that New York Times reporter Timothy O'Brian egregiously mis-stated details of the tycoon's personal and business lives and went far beyond the line by suggesting that he "was not close to being a billionaire".

In two decades of hogging New York City's headlines, Trump's business dealings have taken him on a roller-coaster of financial fortunes, with parts of his business brushing with bankruptcy.

Indeed, his entire empire almost went under in the early 1990s, when banks baulked at its ballooning debt. But his status as America's brashest property baron has been fed by his relentless boasting.

Most recently, Trump has achieved even greater attention on the national stage in his role as MC in the highly successful television show The Apprentice, in which he set money-making tasks for young and aspiring business managers, only to fire them one by one at the end of each episode until he gave the winning contestant a job within his empire.

It is Trump's ability to self-inflate his image that O'Brian seeks to deconstruct in his book, Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald.

Since its publication in October, it has been serialised in the New York Times and has received favourable reviews.

O'Brian's contention is that assessments of Trump's personal wealth, mostly as stated in the annual Forbes magazine list of America's richest people, have been far removed from the truth.

He described the Trump empire, which over the years has spanned huge apartment towers, casinos and, briefly, an airline, as a "kitten's skein of holdings Donald had woven together".

Quoting anonymous sources that he states are close to the developer, O'Brian says in his book that Trump is "not remotely close to being a billionaire", with his net worth "somewhere between US$150 million and US$250 million".

You can apparently say what you like about Trump - whose third wife, former Slovenian model Melania Knauss, is pregnant with his fifth child - as long as you never, ever impugn his billionaire status.

The suit is demanding an extraordinary US$2.5 billion in compensation for the alleged slight as well as another US$2.5 billion in punitive damages. The defendants are O'Brian and his publisher, Warner Books.

O'Brian spent 15 years researching his book, often rubbing shoulders with his subject and his phalanx of celebrity friends.

Trump, who apparently co-operated willingly, has now condemned the book as "terribly written".

But USA Today, in a review of the book, said it was "chock-full of examples of Trump's tendency to exaggerate, particularly when it comes to his net worth".

- INDEPENDENT