Will Billionaire Trump Add the Power of the Presidency to the Trump Brand?

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Will Billionaire Trump Add the Power of the Presidency to the Trump Brand?

February 11th, 2016

Awake Goy

Front-runner for Republican presidential nomination, Donald trump

Billionaire Donald Trump, with an impressive victory in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, accelerated his momentum toward becoming the next President of the United States. Thus, one might rightly ask: “How much will be added to the prestige and earning power of the Trump Brand if Trump’s bid to be the 45^th President is successful?”

Judging from the financial windfall gains of recent U.S. Presidents after they exited this grand office, the Trump Brand will profit tremendously from a Trump presidency—According to Huffpost Business: Richard M. Nixon made significant sums of money from a series of interviews with David Frost and book advances; Gerald R. Ford made nearly a million dollars a year form book advances and serving on boards of American companies; Jimmy E. Carter, in debt when he left office, amassed a substantial fortune from book sales; and Ronald W. Reagan was highly paid for his autobiography and as a GE spokesman.

A September 29, 2015 article in Forbes, stated that Bill Clinton left the White House essentially broke in 2001, but has subsequently made an incredible amount of money through public speaking, book deals and consulting; his net worth is listed as $80 million. Likewise, Hillary Clinton has made a bundle of money since she left public office: her net worth is listed as $31.3 million. And, Jeb Bush, a 2016 presidential contender as is Hillary Clinton, has seen his net worth skyrocket from the time he left the position of Governor of Florida in 2007 to the present.

Snopes.com, in October, 2012, displayed a graph they pulled from CNN/Money that indicated that Barack Obama had increased his net worth from $l.3 million at the beginning of his presidency in 2008 to $11.4 million by the end of 2011. TheRichest lists President Obama’s current net worth to be $12.2 million.

George Washington, the nation’s first President, was one of the wealthiest persons to have occupied the oval office, and Lincoln was one of the poorest, so says Huffpost Business. The same source gives data that show all the U.S. presidents from John Adams (1797-1801) through Franklin Pierce (1853-1857) to have been multi-millionaires. However, from the middle to the late 1800’s “most presidents were lawyers who spent years in public service” and rarely amassed large fortunes, retiring without the funds to live at the standard to which they had become accustomed while serving as President. This financial plight of Former Presidents changed in the 20^th century with changes in the economy and the lifting of the stigma of making money from the prestige gained from being President.

Donald Trump has personally related his wealth as being in excess of $10 billion. However, Forbes claims that Trump’s net worth is more like $4.5 billion. Regardless to which of these figures is closest to being correct, by all accounts Donald Trump is indeed in the billionaire class. That fact considered, along with his reality TV star fame and promotional genius, if Trump should ascend to the highest political office in the land, the Trump Brand would surely be propelled to an extraordinary elevation in power and financial value.