Donald Trump is an artist. His talent is not on the level of George W. Bush, whose self-portraits and book of paintings of military veterans have somehow managed to help endear him to even Americans who loathed him in the early 2000s. But with the $16,000 sale of just one crude sketch of the Empire State Building, someone now owns something that 45 has, indeed, created with his short, apricot-hued fingers.
That someone, per Page Six, is real-estate mogul Elie Hirschfeld, who bought a sketch the president did of the Empire State Building in the 1990s. Hirschfeld paid $4,000 more than the sketch’s estimated going price.
Per the Chicago Tribune, Trump first sketched the drawing—a very basic depiction of the Empire State Building featuring a few stacked squares and accompanied by his sloppy signature—for a Florida charity auction in 1995, around the time he first opened Mar-a-Lago.
Then, the 12-by-9-inch black marker picture went for only $100. Hirschfeld said he plans to hang his $16,000 drawing alongside a Trump Tower sketch by Andy Warhol and an Edward Hopper drawing of the Waldorf Astoria.
While the question remains why anyone would pay upwards of thousands of dollars for a few black lines Trump drew 22 years ago, some proceeds will go to National Public Radio, an organization for which the president has already planned to cut funding. Read more