Donald Trump, former president and current Republican presidential candidate, salutes during a campaign rally on March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. How embarrassing. Donald Trump’s well-known history of financial exaggeration appears to be catching up to him in a very inconvenient place, a courtroom.
Last fall, New York Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump liable for fraud and ordered him to pay a penalty that now sits at $454 million. On Monday, his legal team said that mighty sum was so high that it would be a “practical impossibility” for the former president to pay. Trump has a reputation for telling tall tales about things that don’t even call for it. The Republican who would be president has been accused of exaggerating the number of floors in New York’s Trump Tower, inflating his own height by an inch and — responding to the suggestions on the Republican primary debate stage in 2016 that he has abnormally short fingers — that he had other parts of his anatomy that were just fine.
I wondered about that back in 2016 when I first read reports of his exaggerating the height of and floor space in Trump Tower. That seemed harmless, though. Nothing close to the drama these days in a New York courtroom. Maybe people in some circumstances do like to be duped. That certainly explains some of the goofier choices I’ve seen voters make in some elections.