Interviewer asks Donald Trump how his net worth jumped $3 billion. He suggests everyone got richer since he returned to office: ‘So did everyone’s’

On a recent 60 Minutes broadcast, correspondent Ross Douthat raised a Forbes report with President Donald Trump. The report said the president’s net worth had risen by $3 billion, a figure that could have moved with stock prices.

Trump interrupted and said, “Well, so did everyone’s.” Douthat noted that his own net worth had not increased by three billion dollars. Trump answered, “Well, you should have had stock.”

When Douthat asked again how the jump occurred, Trump said he spends almost no time thinking about his net worth and does not care. Then he said, “I have a son who’s ho’s a very straight, good guy. He watches over money. I don’t even talk to him about it. He watches. He gives – they gave my money – I have a lot of cash, I’ve had a lot of cash long before I came in here. I don’t take a salary, you know?”

Forbes editor outlines the factors behind the reported rise

Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander, the person who calculates these net-worth figures, replied to the clip on X. He said the president’s answer was nonsense and that he would explain the numbers.

Alexander wrote that Forbes estimated the fortune grew from $4.3 billion in the fall of 2024 to $7.3 billion a year later. Looking back further, he said the estimate stood at $2.3 billion on March 8, 2024, meaning the total gain from that earlier date was roughly five billion dollars. His gain was far from unique among the ultra-rich, as billionaires gained $1.5 trillion under Trump while many Americans struggled to save.

A large share of the first surge, according to Alexander, came when Trump Media and Technology Group, which runs Truth Social, entered the public markets. Fans bought heavily, and the value climbed more on political interest than on ordinary business results. He put the Trump Media contribution at about $1.8 billion of the roughly $2 billion added between March and fall 2024. In a Forbes cover story that fall he quoted Trump saying, “Politics is great because you don’t spend any money. You can’t make a bad deal.”

Alexander next described World Liberty Financial, launched just before the election. Under the terms he reported, Trump would receive 52.5 percent of every dollar put in after the first $30 million, with 22.5 percent going to family members and 12.5 percent to a family affiliate of Steve Witkoff. Twenty days after the election, crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun announced a $30 million investment that met the threshold. One day before the inauguration, Sun announced another $45 million.

Money then arrived from other sources as well. Alexander noted a firm that had moved to the United Arab Emirates bought $25 million in tokens, and an Abu Dhabi-linked nonprofit bought $100 million more. Trump kept his stake throughout, he wrote.

Associates tied to a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family later signed a deal, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, to buy 49 percent of a crypto venture for $500 million. A small publicly traded healthcare company purchased roughly $700 million in tokens from the same venture.

By the end of 2025, Alexander calculated, the crypto activity had generated $1,425,000,000 in liquidity from World Liberty Financial and a related memecoin in a single year. Trump also retained tokens that Forbes valued at about $1 billion by fall 2025 after they had been worth nothing a year earlier.

Licensing deals outside the United States supplied another large piece. Alexander said the income rose from $6 million in 2023 to $46 million in 2024 and then to $61 million in 2025. The estimated value of the licensing business itself moved from about $100 million in fall 2024 to $500 million a year later. One example was a hotel-and-golf project in Oman that was announced the day before Trump began his 2024 campaign.

An appeals court ruling in the New York civil fraud case removed a further amount. The court agreed that fraud had taken place but canceled the financial penalty. Alexander said that change alone lifted the net-worth estimate by roughly half a billion dollars.

Taken together, he wrote, the main elements of the $3 billion one-year increase were more than $1 billion from crypto earnings, about $1 billion in newly issued crypto tokens, a $400 million expansion of the branding business, and the elimination of the nearly $500 million fine. Those items, not broad stock-market gains, accounted for the rise Forbes reported.

Other outlets have reported on Trump’s increasing wealth since his return to office. In January, the New York Times broke down how he allegedly made $1.4 billion through backdoor deals in the first year of his second term.