Apology demanded: Why was Donald Trump not ranked in Forbes 400 list?
Indictment-plagued former US President Donald Trump demanded Forbes to apologise for not listing him in the list of 400 richest people as the business magazine dropped him for the second time in three years.
“I hereby demand a full apology from the failing Forbes magazine,” Donald Trump wrote on his struggling social media platform Truth Social.
Forbes maintained while releasing the ranking last week that the net worth of the 77-year-old was down $600m from a year before.
The billionaire has been on the list since the 1990s, other than in 2021.
The Republican presidential hopeful 2024 criticized Forbers for “really dumb writers assigned to hit him hard, while bragging about leads in Republican presidential polling he enjoys notwithstanding four indictments and 91 criminal charges.
Trump said Monday: “So much for Forbes!”
Even after deploring the list, he returned to his social media platform and criticized the writer, Dan Alexander, for the many false and libellous articles [Forbes] have written about him.
Alexander, who is a senior editor at Forbes, has also authored a book, White House Inc: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency Into a Business, in 2020.
In a post on X — formerly called Twitter, Alexander said: “Hey Donald Trump, if you want to point out a single false fact in any of the articles I’ve published about you – or in the book I wrote about you – feel free. In the meantime, I’m going to keep reporting – and carefully fact-checking every word I publish.”
Another writer, Adam Klasfeld of the Messenger, said: “If you were wondering why Trump suddenly went after Forbes and Dan Alexander, he posted his swipe hours after their fact-checking emails about his net worth … were entered into evidence in a New York state civil trial concerning alleged business fraud.”
Trump wrote in his post that Forbes cooperated with Letitia James, the Democratic attorney general of New York state who sued Trump, his adult sons and his business.
Trump called James “racist and incompetent”.
James was successful in the court as she won a pre-trial partial ruling in which the judge said Donald Trump was liable for fraud by overstating the value of assets.
In yet another false statement on his Truth Social post, Trump said that Forbes was “owned by the communist Chinese Government, and China will do anything to stop Maga [Make America Great Again]”.