In a deposition obtained by the Washington Post, Donald Trump appears to brag that his presidential campaigning has boosted his personal brand — which is so central to a lot of his business ventures.

“I think people like politics. And they like to be around the name and maybe meI think people really dig it,” he says.

The deposition was recorded in June as part of a $US10 million breach-of-contract lawsuit the Republican candidate is taking against celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian.

The chef had agreed to open a restaurant in Mr Trump’s new hotel in Washington DC — due to open in a couple of months — but pulled out after Mr Trump launched his campaign by denouncing Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists, the Post says.

A second well-known chef, José Andrés, also pulled a planned restaurant for the same reason and is subject to a separate lawsuit filed by Mr Trump.

There is an element of contraction in Mr Trump’s freewheeling, two-hour deposition.

At one point he acknowledges his comments about Mexicans also cost him his licensing deal with Serta. The largest mattress manufacturer in the US cancelled its “Donald Trump” line.

NBC has also failed to renew The Apprentice (though Mr Trump claims that was his decision).

And the $US10 million lawsuit against Mr Zakarian does, by dint of its very existence, imply at least a degree of financial fallout.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings …
Measuring whether the campaign has been good for Mr Trump’s various businesses overall would necessitate a measure of his personal wealth.

Here, there is a wide gulf between various business publications’ estimates, which tend to be based on market valuations of his assets and range from $US2.56 billion (that is, less than what he would be worth today if he had simply put his inherited fortuned into an index fund based on the S&P 500) and the Republican candidate’s own tally of around $US10 billion — the majority of which is the value he ascribes to his personal brand.

And how is that brand valuation calculated, exactly? Well, it’s subjective and depends in part on which side of bed The Donald got out of. In yet another deposition, this time for a lawsuit against New York Times journalist and author Timothy O’Brien, who questioned Mr Trump’s wealth, he says: “My net worth fluctuates, goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings.”

Mr Trump sued Mr O’Brien for $US5 billion in 2007, after his book Trump Nation: the Art of Being Donald included a passage suggesting Mr Trump’s net worth was actually in the region of $US150 million to $US250 million.

It was questionable whether a reporter would have been able to pay out that level of damages.

But in the event, Mr Trump lost the case, and lost an appeal.

The billionaire (or should that be millionaire?) was caught lying or exaggerating his stakes in various assets at 30 points during his deposition, according to the Post, which gleefully dug up the paperwork for an article published earlier this week.