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Forbes has issued a response following former US President Donald Trump’s demand for an apology from the magazine, which had removed him from its list of the 400 wealthiest people in the US for the second time in three years.
Forbes unveiled its list last week, indicating a decrease of $600 million in Trump’s net worth from the previous year. Trump had been a fixture on the list since the 1990s but was omitted in 2021.
On Wednesday, October 11, Trump took to Truth Social, a social media platform he established after being banned from mainstream platforms due to the events of January 6 at the Capitol, to declare, “I hereby demand a full apology from the struggling Forbes magazine.”
In response, Trump criticized the “incompetent writers tasked with attacking me” and boasted about his substantial leads in Republican presidential polls, despite facing 91 criminal charges. He concluded with a dismissive, “So much for Forbes!”
Later on Wednesday, he also lashed out at Forbes writer Dan Alexander, accusing him of producing numerous false and defamatory articles.
Dan Alexander, a senior editor at Forbes and the author of the 2020 book “White House Inc: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency Into a Business,” responded to Trump via Twitter: “Hey Donald Trump, if you can pinpoint any inaccurate information in any of my articles about you or in my book, please feel free to do so. Meanwhile, I will continue to report and meticulously fact-check every word I publish.”
In his post, Trump claimed that Forbes had “cooperated” with Letitia James, the Democratic attorney general of New York State, who sued Trump, his adult sons, and his business.
Trump also referred to James as “racist and incompetent,” and used a nickname that some observers have suggested may be a racist dog whistle. In the court case, however, James has already secured a pre-trial partial ruling in which the judge determined that Trump had committed fraud by overstating the value of assets.
Furthermore, Trump made a false claim, asserting that Forbes was “owned by the Communist Chinese Government,” and suggested that China would take any action necessary to thwart “Maga,” a reference to his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
