It was no surprise that Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee have reached a deal, as he "clearly" did not have enough cash in hand to move forward with his own self-funded campaign, Steve Forbes, the chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media and a one-time presidential candidate, said Wednesday.
"It is one thing to have assets, and quite another to have the cash," Forbes told
CNN's Alisyn Camerota on the "New Day" morning program. "Cash, you need hundreds of millions of dollars, and clearly he did not have that in hand."
Trump makes it clear every day that he says what he wants and will not be beholden to anyone or anything, "and so I think he can get away" with making the deal with the RNC, Forbes said.
However, he does think that Trump should release his tax returns, but he doesn't think Trump's net worth is at the $10 billion he claimed in a
financial disclosure statement on Tuesday.
"We came out with a number of $4.5 billion," Forbes said of Forbes Magazine's analysis of Trump's finances. "To most people, $4.5 billion, $10 billion, $20 billion, what's the difference?"
And when it comes to Trump's tax returns, Forbes said he "would have advocated" releasing them months ago, but he doesn't think the tax returns will hurt Trump the same way other candidates would be hurt. Trump knows how to use the tax code and "what's bad in it," but that also puts him in a "better position to cure it because he knows how bad it is," said Forbes. Further, had there been any fraud in them, "the IRS would have been on him already, and there would have been a criminal investigation."
However, Forbes suspects that in the next few months there could be "the equivalent of a Wikileaks, and a lot of this stuff will be out there, in a very selective way."
"I just don't trust the federal government," Forbes continued. " don't trust keeping that information secret."
Forbes said he will support Trump as the eventual nominee and "unless something, a meteor hits the Earth," Trump will be in in the fall race. Still, Forbes wants Trump to spell out his tax plan.
"He came up with a proposal a few weeks, a few months again, then said, maybe we're going to tweak it," said Forbes. "He's got to spell it out and show that this is a coherent thing. I think he will, and this is where I think the Democrats underestimate him. "
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