Former US President Donald Trump has been voted out of office, booted from Twitter and now fallen spectacularly off the Forbes 400 rich list, for the first time in 25 years.
The reality star is worth $2.5 billion (£1.8bn), leaving him $400 million (£293m) short to make this year’s Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people.
The magazine says his failure to diversify his property portfolio with crypto or tech stocks since the pandemic has led him to be $600m (£440m) down from last year where he placed 339th.
According to Forbes: “If Trump is looking for someone to blame, he can start with himself.
“By ploughing that $2.4 billion in an index fund tracking the S&P 500, for example, Trump’s fortune would have ballooned to $4.5 billion by now, leaving him 80% richer than he is today. His refusal to divest, in other words, cost him $2 billion.”
Meanwhile, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos topped the list for the fourth year running with an estimated fortune of $177bn (£129bn).
He was followed by Tesla chief Elon Musk with $151bn (£110bn) and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with $134bn (£98bn) who is tied with Bill Gates.
It’s hard to judge how the fall has affected Trump with the 75-year-old banned from all his favourite social media platforms since January, when he was accused of inciting the January 6 riots on the US Capitol.
Trump was also suspended from Facebook and Google’s YouTube over similar concerns that he would provoke violence.
Facebook’s ban will last two years, until January 7 2023, after which the company will review his suspension. YouTube’s ban is indefinite.
