Declasse Donald: Who inflates his own wealth?
Timothy P. Carney
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Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers will argue that he didn’t defraud anyone by vastly overstating the value of his assets, but that won’t diminish the enjoyment his critics derive from seeing Trump exposed, once again, as a con artist. His self-image as a successful billionaire is exposed as built on lies and fantasies.
According to Judge Arthur Engoron, he exaggerated not only the value of his home and properties by orders of magnitude but also claimed his own residence was three times larger than it actually is. In every corner of his life, according to this ruling, Trump vastly exaggerated his wealth.
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This may seem like a small ruling, it may not stand, and it won’t bear much on Trump’s presidential run. But it’s actually significant because it touches on something about Trump that has always turned off the college-educated upper-middle class: Trump exaggerates his wealth, while in elite circles, decent people do the opposite.
Normal bourgeois values prescribe that we don’t talk about our wealth and further that we try to diminish our own wealth. Most wealthy college-educated people are embarrassed about how large their income is or how valuable their home is.
Conspicuous displays of wealth are gauche in the sort of circles that most journalists, academics, lawyers, or other professionals run in. In fact, you often see among journalists a competition to claim blue-collar cred.
There are 10,000 reasons to dislike Donald Trump, but I think this is a significant one that almost nobody talks about: He has a declasse manner of bragging about, and even exaggerating, his wealth.