“The beauty of me is that I’m very rich,” he said in a Good Morning America interview in 2011, back when his presidential conquest was just an idea.
And it’s true. Compared to your average American, Trump is bathe-in-a-claw-foot-tub-full-of-diamonds rich.
Forbes just released their list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, and Trump ranked in at 248 with $3.1 billion. To most of us, that sounds like an intangible amount of moola — but this actually represents a $600 million dollar loss for our president and real estate tycoon.
Trump is down 92 spots on the Forbes list because of the loss. “A tough New York real estate market” and “a costly lawsuit and an expensive presidential campaign” were the cause for the financial hit," Forbes says.
But there are two Arizonans who can outspend our 45th President. This is important knowledge for any Phoenician in the gold-digging or trivia-night business.
The Valley business barons are:
Bruce Halle
Halle is a Paradise Valley resident and the chairman of Discount Tire Co. Impressively, the Korean War veteran came in as the richest Arizonan on the Forbes’ list with a whopping $4.6 billion. The 87-year-old has come a long way since he started Discount Tire in 1960 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with only six tires.
Halle is so rich he donated a whopping $1 million to the movement that defeated last year's ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana.
Although he is richer than Trump, Halle, too, understands the art of the deal. He once told Tire Business magazine that the company’s name included “discount” because “everybody wants a deal.”
Mark Shoen
This Phoenix resident owns about one-fifth of Amerco, the parent company of U-Haul, which is North America’s biggest storage and moving business.
His climb into the top 400 wasn’t a painless one. Shoen's parents, Leonard Samuel and Anna Mary Shoen, founded the company in 1945, but later gifted shares to Mark and his 11 siblings.
You know how ungrateful kids can be — several siblings banded together to take over the company, resulting in decades of lawsuits. Forbes says Mark took his brother Joe Shoen’s side in the bitter familial feud that ended with Joe seizing control of the company from Leonard, who eventually committed suicide by driving his car into a tree. But
Forbes says Mark has kept a low profile in the wake of all the conflict, but remains on good terms with Joe, who still runs the U-Haul show. Mark also owns one of the largest private self-storage operations in the U.S. (which happens to do business with U-Haul).
Makes you wonder if Shoen has tested his fortune by finding out how many dollar bills you can fit into the back of a U-Haul van.
