Let's remember the time Donald Trump cashed a 13¢ check sent to him as a prank
Donald Trump! Everyone is talking about Trump, whether you’re a fan of the man or a cry-baby loser. He’s been a part of the fabric of New York City and American culture for decades now. He’s running for President right now and claims to be worth a lot of money. Did you know he once cashed a check for 13 cents that a magazine sent him as an experiment to see if he’d cash it? Because that happened once!
Published between 1986 and 1998, Spy magazine was the hip, satirical, bomb-throwing magazine du jour, and in 1990 the writers had a great idea for a prank: What would happen if you sent checks for small amounts to celebrities and saw who cashed them, putting to test the theory that every man (and woman) has a price? In their words:
“We could however, send them checks for minuscule sums of money—sums so small they couldn’t fund as much as a minute of the recipients’ existence—and see who would bother to bank these teensy amounts of money.”
Spy thought “some subterfuge” would be necessary—it’d be suspicious to get a check from the magazine that lampooned so many of the intended recipients. This was specifically true for Trump, who Spy once famously referred to as a “short-fingered vulgarian.”