I told you Donald Trump was flat broke

Donald Trump’s newly unearthed tax returns reveal that he’s deeply in debt, upside down on all of his assets, and has a negative net worth. That means he’s not a billionaire, a millionaire, or even a thousandaire – he’s just a broke guy who’s been abusing his line of credit and trying to fend off yet another bankruptcy.

None of this should come as a revelation. In fact if you’ve been reading Palmer Report for awhile, you know that I spelled out logical proof a few years ago that Trump was indeed flat broke. It happened when Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 out of his own pocket to keep her quiet about her affair with Trump. That single act alone provided proof, in two ways, that Trump was broke.

First, as loyal as Michael Cohen might have been, no one wants to take out a second mortgage on their home just to pay off their boss’ mistress. The only possible explanation for why Cohen was willing to do this was that Donald Trump couldn’t get his hands on the cash. Any billionaire, or even multimillionaire, would have no trouble getting $130,000 cash. They’d have it in savings, or they could obtain a loan, or if they’re a criminal like Trump they could just illegally pull the cash out of the revenue of one of their businesses. But Trump didn’t do any of those things, because he couldn’t, because he was too flat broke and deeply in debt to be able to get his hands on $130,000.

Second, the oddly specific dollar amount was also a huge clue. No one has ever asked for or offered $130,000 as a hush money payoff amount. You’d pick a round number, like $150,000 or $200,000 or $250,000. Even if you were negotiating and split the difference between two round numbers, you still wouldn’t land on $130,000. This means that the intention was to pay Stormy Daniels a larger amount, but the most Cohen could get from his lender was $130,000, so he had to offer Stormy that embarrassingly strange dollar amount.

The bottom line is that Donald Trump is that one guy we all know who lives lavishly off credit cards, but never has any cash to his name, because all of his income goes directly to making minimum payments on his debts. That guy is flat broke with no legitimate assets and a negative net worth, and he’s not fooling anyone. No one should be fooled by Donald Trump’s act either. He has a huge negative net worth, meaning every one of you reading this has a higher net worth than he does, simply by virtue of not being hundreds of millions of dollars upside down.