'Didn’t think Eric Trump could get dumber': Ridicule explodes over Mona Lisa comparison
Eric Trump proclaimed on Newsmax this weekend that his family's "assets" are the "Mona Lisas of the real estate world," prompting ridicule across the internet.
Trump was responding to the legal troubles the Trump Organization is facing in New York after the company was accused of artificially inflating assets when attempting to get better loans and insurance rates. While Trump's father, Donald Trump, has confessed that they lied, he argued that it didn't hurt anyone; thus, they should be considered innocent.
The laws are in place because had Trump defaulted on his loans, he would have been foreclosed on, but the bank would have obtained less than what it was owed. It's akin to saying someone can drive drunk as long as they don't hit anyone.
Eric Trump believes their properties are so grand they're priceless, just like Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. A flood opened up on the younger Trump with people offering other Renaissance paintings depicting cannibalism or other harsh things as the real comparison.
Others took a different route:
"This is roughly analogous to comparing a Gremlin with missing hubcaps to a Bugatti," mocked The Intellectualist.
Trump biographer Tim O'Brien said, "Donald Trump called the Plaza Hotel his 'Mona Lisa' property after buying it for about $408 million in 1988 — a deal so bad, so leveraged and so overpriced that he had to put the building into bankruptcy in 1992. The kids get all their talking points from their dad."
"The debt service on Trump properties must make them the most highly leveraged Mona Lisa properties around," mocked another person.
"The Mona Lisa is Priceless; what does Trump have that's even worth anything to a collector of anything?" questioned Ron Pitts.
Democratic political operative Adam Parkhomenko noted, "I honestly didn’t think Eric Trump could get any dumber."
However, one person cited the logical argument.
"That’s a great analogy!" said @Elfbjorn410. "Many people think that the Mona Lisa is a huge painting. It’s only 30”x21". Many people think that daddy’s apartment is 30k sqft. It’s a lot smaller at 10k. What else of daddy’s and yours is a lot smaller than people think?"