- Trump told The New York Times in 2005 he got a $1 million discount on the ring.
- Graff Diamonds told Forbes Thursday that the president actually paid full price.
Here’s a shocker: President Trump was just caught exaggerating about how powerful the Trump family brand really is. This time, he was apparently lied about a discount he supposedly got on Melania’s engagement ring. Graff Diamonds, the jewelers who sold Trump the 15-carat diamond ring, told Forbes on Thursday that the president paid full price for the rock, despite what he recounted in a 2005 interview with the The New York Times.
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In a profile titled “At Celebrity Nuptials to Die for, Vendors Give Themselves Away,” Trump boasted that he got a yuuuge discount of $1 million for Melania’s ring, which reportedly retailed at $1.5 million, because “only a fool would say, ‘No thank you, I want to pay a million dollars more for a diamond.”
Trump, who, remember, co-wrote The Art of the Deal, also told the publication that he was able to get a good price from wedding vendors because the Trump name carries a lot of weight. “Literally anything you can imagine from photos to flowers to food to jets to airports to diamonds,” Trump said. “And for every item, there’s five people who want to do it. In all cases they don’t want anything, but they want recognition.”
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However, almost 13 years after that interview, Graff Diamonds’ billionaire chairman Laurence Graff is contradicting Trump’s claims, telling Forbes that the London-based company does “no favors.”
“We don’t sell items for publicity value,” Graff CFO Nicholas Paine added. A third unnamed source confirmed that Trump “paid for [the ring] in full, and he paid immediately.”
Graff Diamonds reportedly sold the president a separate 25-carat-diamond for the couple’s 10th wedding anniversary, which cost $3 million. According to Forbes, the president also paid for that ring in full.
