Wealth report uncovers financial surprises about 2020 presidential candidates
President Trump makes it rain when compared to the rest of the 2020 presidential candidates, according to Forbes, who recently released its definitive wealth ranking for the 2020 presidential candidates. But how do the rest stack up?
Trump topped the list with a net worth of $3.1 billion, followed by Tom Steyer with a cash flow of $1.6 billion, followed by John Delaney with $200 million, Michael Bennet with $15 million and Elizabeth Warren with $12 million.
Rounding out the bottom of the list Hawaii Rep.Tulsi Gabbard ($500,000), Tim Ryan ($500,000) and Pete Buttigieg ($100,000).
However, the list may be revealing more than just faces and numbers.
“Each one of these people has their own story and you can learn a lot by looking at how somebody made their money,” Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander told FOX Business during an appearance on “Mornings with Maria.” “If you look at Beto O’Rourke, you know, most of it comes from his family. If you look at John Delaney, the moderate Democrat, makes sense, he's made a heck of a lot of money in the business world.”
The list also disclosed some unforeseen facts, he said, including how some of the candidates became millionaires.
“One of the other things that was surprising, especially as you look toward the bottom of the list, is how valuable some of these government pensions are -- the people who've stayed in government for a while. I mean, you can stay in government for years and you just become a millionaire based on that,” he said. “So that doesn't happen in most other careers that you might enter. But in government, it can.”
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The report also provided a transparency score for each of the candidates. Alexander said the candidates checked all the boxed when it came to the basic questions, however when pressed on bigger issues, they were buttoned up.
“Like for Buttigieg, how much student debt, that's a big thing. All these Democrats are talking about what they're going to do a student debt. So that’s a policy that could really affect his personal fortune and he wouldn't answer it,” he said. “If you look at Elizabeth Warren, you know, on her disclosures, she lists some largest assets as a million dollars-plus and she wouldn't specify exactly how many millions of dollars-plus they are.”
“And so you know when we started, I thought that in order to contrast himself from Trump a lot of these candidates would try to be as open as possible and at the end of it we found that, yes, they were more transparent than Trump about their finances but none of them were totally open books,” he added.