Fred Trump

Fred Trump
Frederick Christ Trump Sr. (October 11, 1905 – June 25, 1999) was an American real-estate developer and businessman. He was the father of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.
Born in the Bronx to German immigrants, Fred began working in home construction and sales in the 1920s before heading the real-estate business started by his parents (later known as the Trump Organization). Utilizing federal aid, Fred's company rose to success, building and managing single-family houses in Queens, apartments for war workers on the East Coast during World War II, and more than 27,000 apartments in New York City overall.
Trump was investigated for profiteering by a U.S. Senate committee in 1954 and again by New York State in 1966. Donald Trump became the president of his father's real-estate business in 1971, and they were sued by the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division for violating the Fair Housing Act in 1973; in the case settlement, the Trumps were ordered to take several measures to curb racial discrimination.
From World War II onwards, to avoid associations with Nazism, Trump denied his German ancestry and also supported Jewish causes. During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, reports of Fred's arrest at a 1927 Ku Klux Klan parade gained publicity, although there is no conclusive evidence that he supported the organization. Additionally, as president, Donald repeatedly and falsely claimed that his father was born in Germany.
Contradicting Donald Trump's campaign claim that he built a multi-billion-dollar company using "a small loan of a million dollars" from his father, in 2018 The New York Times reported that Trump and his wife provided over $1 billion (in 2018 currency) to their progeny overall, avoiding over $500 million in gift taxes; e.g. in 1987, Trump bought $15.5 million in shares in Trump Palace Condominiums, which he later sold to Donald for $10,000; in 1992 these two set up a subsidiary which was evidently used to funnel Fred's money to his surviving children; shortly before his death, Fred transferred the bulk of his apartment buildings to his children, who several years later sold them for over 16 times their previously declared worth.
Early life and career
Trump's father, the German American Friedrich Trump, amassed considerable wealth during the Klondike Gold Rush by running a restaurant and brothel for the miners. Friedrich returned to Kallstadt in 1901, and, by the next year, met and married Elizabeth Christ. They moved to New York City, where their first child, Elizabeth, was born in 1904. Later that year, the family returned to Kallstadt. Fred was conceived in Bavaria, where his parents wished to residency, but Friedrich was banished for dodging the draft. The family returned to New York on July 1, 1905, and moved to the Bronx, where Frederick Christ Trump was born on October 11. Fred's younger brother, John G. Trump, was born in 1907. All three children were raised speaking German. In September 1908, the family moved to Woodhaven, Queens.
Many details of Trump's childhood come from autobiographical accounts and emphasize independence, learning and especially hard workto the point of being somewhat fictionalized. At the age of 10, Trump worked as a delivery boy for a butcher. About two years later, his father died in the 1918 flu pandemic. From 1918 to 1923, Fred attended Richmond Hill High School in Queens, while working as a caddy, curb whitewasher, delivery boy, and newspaper hawker. Meanwhile, his mother continued the real-estate business Frederick had begun. Interested in becoming a builder, Fred put up a garage for a neighbor and took night classes in carpentry and reading blueprints; he reputedly studied plumbing, masonry, and electrical wiring via correspondence courses, although other biographical sources limit his construction education to the period after high school when he was also working in the field.
After graduating in January 1923, Trump obtained full-time work pulling lumber to construction sites. He studied carpentry and became a carpenter's assistant. Trump's mother held the business in her name until he reached 21, the age of majority. The company name "E. Trump & Son" appeared in advertising by 1924, by which year Trump ostensibly used an $800 loan from his mother to complete and sell his first house. Public records, however, do not support him building until 1927, the year the company was incorporated (and following Trump's 21st birthday). Trump purportedly built 19 more homes by 1926 in Hollis, Queens, selling some before they were finished to finance others.
1927 arrest
On Memorial Day in 1927, over a thousand Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members marched in a Queens parade to protest "Native-born Protestant Americans" being "assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City". The 21-year old Trump and six other men were arrested. All seven were referred to as "berobed marchers" in the Long Island Daily Press. Trump, detained "on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so", was dismissed. Among the men arrested on the same charge was a bystander who had had his foot run over by a police car. According to the police, the five remaining men were certainly Klan members. Multiple newspaper articles on the incident list Trump's address (in Jamaica, Queens), which he is recorded as living at on various documents from 1928 to 1940. Despite this arrest, there is no conclusive evidence that Trump was a member or supporter of the KKK.
Rise to success
In 1933, Trump built one of New York City's first modern supermarkets, called Trump Market, in Woodhaven, Queens. It was modeled on Long Island's King Kullen, a self-service supermarket chain. Trump's store advertised "Serve Yourself and Save!" and quickly became popular. After six months, Trump sold it to King Kullen.
In 1934, Trump and a partner acquired in federal court the mortgage-servicing subsidiary of Brooklyn's J. Lehrenkrauss Corporation, which had gone bankrupt and subsequently been broken up. This gave Trump access to the titles of many properties nearing foreclosure, which he bought at low cost and sold at a profit. This and similar real-estate ventures quickly brought him fame as one of New York City's most successful businessmen.
Trump made use of loan subsidies created by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) not long after the program was initiated via the National Housing Act of 1934, which also enabled the discriminatory practice of redlining. By 1936, Trump had 400 workers digging foundations for houses that would be sold at prices ranging from $3,000 to $6,250. Trump used his father's psychological tactic of listing properties at prices ending in "... 9.99". In the late 1930s, he used a boat to advertise off Coney Island's shore; it played patriotic music and floated out swordfish-shaped balloons which could be redeemed for $25 or $250 towards one of his properties. In 1938, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle referred to Trump as "the Henry Ford of the home building industry". During this period, Trump predicted that he would profit from World War II. By 1942, he had built 2,000 homes in Brooklyn using FHA funds.
During the war, the federal Office of Production Management (established in 1941) allowed the use of FHA funding for defense housing in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, owing to the proximity of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Trump planned to build 700 houses there, which would have been both his and the state FHA office's biggest project to date, but following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States's declaration of war on Japan, the project was dissolved in favor of defense housing at the East Coast's naval nexus, Hampton Roads's Norfolk, Virginia, where Trump was already working on an apartment complex. Congress added a provision to the National Housing Act generating mortgage insurance for defense apartments, through which Trump was allowed to own the properties he built for war workers. By 1944, he had constructed 1,360 wartime apartments, almost 10% of the total created in Norfolk. He also built barracks and garden apartments for U.S. Navy personnel near major shipyards in Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia, as well as Chester, Pennsylvania.
Following the war, Trump expanded into middle-income housing for the families of returning veterans. From 1947 to 1949, he built Shore Haven in Bensonhurst, which included 32 six-story buildings and a shopping center, covering some 30 acres and procuring him $9 million in FHA funding. In 1950, he built the 23-building Beach Haven Apartments over 40 acres near Coney Island, procuring him $16 million in FHA funds. The total number of apartments included in these projects exceeded 2,700.
Further enterprises
In early 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and other federal leaders began denouncing real-estate profiteers. That June, The New York Times included Trump on a list of 35 city builders accused of profiteering from government contracts. He and others were investigated by a U.S. Senate banking committee for windfall gains. Trump and his partner William Tomasello were cited as examples of how profits were made by builders using the FHA. The two paid $34,200 for a piece of land which they rented to their corporation for $76,960 annually in a 99-year lease, so that if the apartment they built on it ever defaulted, the FHA would owe them $1.924 million. Trump and Tomasello evidently obtained loans for $3.5 million more than Beach Haven Apartments had cost. Trump argued that because he had not withdrawn the money, he had not literally pocketed the profits. He further argued that due to rising costs, he would have had to invest more than the 10% of the mortgage loan not provided by the FHA, and therefore suffer a loss if he built under those conditions.
In 1961, Trump donated $2,500 to the re-election campaign of New York mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., helping him gain favor for the construction of Trump Village, a large apartment complex in Coney Island. The project was constructed in 1963–64 for $70 million. It was one of Trump's biggest and last major projects, and the only one to bear his name. He built more than 27,000 low-income apartments and row houses in the New York area altogether.
In 1966, Trump was again investigated for windfall profiteering, this time by New York State investigators. After Trump overestimated building costs sponsored by a state program, he profited $598,000 on equipment rentals in the construction of Trump Village, which was then spent on other projects. Under testimony on January 27, 1966, Trump said that he had personally done nothing wrong and praised the success of his building project. The commission called Trump "a pretty shrewd character" with a "talent for getting every ounce of profit out of his housing project", but no indictments were made. Instead, tighter administration protocols and accountability in the state's housing program were called for.
Steeplechase Park
On July 1, 1965, Trump purchased Coney Island's recently closed Steeplechase Park for $2.3 million, intending to build luxury apartments. The next year, he announced plans for a enclosed dome with recreational facilities and a convention center. At a highly publicized ceremony in September 1966, Trump demolished the park's Pavilion of Fun, a large glass-enclosed amusement center. He reportedly sold bricks to ceremony guests to smash the remaining glass panels, which included an iconic representation of the park's mascot, the "Funny Face". The next month, New York City announced plans to acquire the former park grounds for recreational use. Trump filed a series of court cases related to the proposed rezoning, ultimately winning $1.3 million. After the site laid vacant for several years, Trump started subleasing it to a manager of fairground amusement park rides. Over another decade, the city eventually succeeded in reclaiming the property.
In July 2016, the Coney Island History Project held a special exhibit for the "50th Anniversary of Fred Trump's Demolition of Steeplechase Pavilion".
Son becomes company president
Fred's son, Donald, joined his father's real-estate business around 1968, initially working in Brooklyn, and rising to become company president in 1971 (while Fred assumed the role of chairman). Donald began calling the company the Trump Organization around 1973. The younger Trump entered the real-estate business in Manhattan, while his father stuck primarily to Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Donald later said: "It was good for me. You know, being the son of somebody, it could have been competition to me. This way, I got Manhattan all to myself." By most accounts, Fred himself had set the family's sights on Manhattan. According to his granddaughter Mary L. Trump, Fred was "intimately involved in all aspects of Donald's early forays into the Manhattan market," and Louise Sunshine (vice president of the Trump Organization from 1973 to 1985) states that Fred was "behind [Donald] in every way, shape and form [including] financing of these developments".
In the mid-1970s, Donald received loans from his father exceeding $14 million. In 2015–16, during his campaign for U.S. president, Donald claimed that his father had given him "a small loan of a million dollars" which he used to build "a company that's worth more than $10 billion". An October 2018 New York Times exposé on Fred and Donald Trump's finances revealed that Fred created 295 income streams for Donald and concludes that the latter "was a millionaire by age 8", receiving $413 million (adjusted for inflation; $483.6 million in 2023 currency) from Fred's business empire over his lifetime, including over $60.7 million (unadjusted for inflation; $163.9 million in 2023 currency) in loans, which were largely unreimbursed.
According to Trump construction vice president Barbara Res, Fred seated business guests in an off-balance chair and advised Donald to arrange his office so that adversaries could be forced to face the sun.
Federal civil rights lawsuit
Minority applicants turned away from renting apartments complained to the New York City Commission on Human Rights and the Urban League, leading these groups to send test applicants to Trump-owned complexes in July 1972. They found that white people were offered apartments, while black people were generally turned away (by being told there were no vacancies); according to the superintendent of Beach Haven Apartments, this was at the direction of his boss. Both of the aforementioned advocacy organizations then raised the issue with the Justice Department. In October 1973, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Trump Organization (Fred Trump, chair, and Donald Trump, president) for infringing the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In response, Trump attorney Roy Cohn countersued for $100 million in damages, accusing the DoJ of false accusations.
Some three dozen former Trump employees were interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Some testified that they had no knowledge of any racial profiling practices, and that a small percentage of their apartments were rented to blacks or Puerto Ricans. A former doorman testified that his supervisor had instructed him to tell prospective black tenants that the rent was double its actual amount. Four landlords or rental agents confirmed that applications sent to the Trump organization's head office for approval were coded by the race of the applicant. One former employee testified that a codewhich he believed was used throughout the Brooklyn branch of the companyreferred to "low lifes" such as "blacks, Puerto Ricans, apparent drug users, or any other type of undesirable applicant", and nine times out of ten it meant the applicant was black; blacks were also falsely told there were no vacancies. A rental agent who had worked with the company for two weeks said that when he asked Fred Trump if he should rent to blacks, he was told that it was "absolutely against the law to discriminate", but after asking again, he was instructed "not to rent to blacks", and was further advised to:
Meanwhile, Trump acquired up to 20% of Brooklyn's Starrett City, a large, federally subsidized housing complex which opened in 1974 with the stated desegregation goal of renting 70% of its units to white people and the rest to minorities.
A consent decree between the DoJ and the Trump Organization was signed on June 10, 1975, with both sides claiming victorythe Trump Organization because the settlement did not require them "to accept persons on welfare as tenants", and the head of DoJ's housing division for the decree being "one of the most far-reaching ever negotiated". It personally and corporately prohibited the Trumps from "discriminating against any person in the ... sale or rental of a dwelling", and "required Trump to advertise vacancies in minority papers [for two years], promote minorities to professional jobs, and list vacancies on a preferential basis". Finally, it ordered the Trumps to "thoroughly acquaint themselves personally on a detailed basis with ... the Fair Housing Act of 1968".
Later legal trespasses
In 1975, tenants of two of Trump's Norfolk tower complexes held a monthlong rent strike due to rodent and insect infestations, as well as problems with water heating, air conditioning, and elevator service. In early 1976, Trump was ordered by a county judge to correct code violations in a 504-unit property in Seat Pleasant, Maryland. According to the county's housing department investigator, violations included broken windows, dilapidated gutters, and missing fire extinguishers. After a court date and a series of phone calls with Trump, he was invited to the property to meet with county officials in September 1976 and arrested on site. Trump was released on $1,000 bail.
In 1987, when Donald's loan debt to his father exceeded $11 million, Fred invested $15.5 million in Trump Palace Condominiums; in 1991, he sold these shares to his son for $10,000, thus appearing to evade millions of dollars in gift taxes by masking a hidden donation, and also benefiting from a legally questionable write-off. In late 1990, when an $18.4 million bond payment for Atlantic City's Trump's Castle was due, Fred sent a bookkeeper to buy $3.5 million in casino chips, which were not used. Trump's Castle quickly made its bond payment. The state's Casino Control Commission found the transaction to constitute an illegal loan and fined the casino $65,000.
In 1992, Fred and Donald set up a subsidiary company which each of Fred's living children owned a 20% stake in. As detailed in 2018 by The New York Times, the business entity had no apparent legitimate purpose and was evidently used to conduct tax fraud by funneling millions of dollars of Fred's wealth to his progeny without paying gift taxes. This was accomplished by billing Fred much more than the actual cost of maintenance work and goods such as boilers.
Wealth and death
In 1976, Trump set up trust funds of $1 million ($5.3 million in 2023 currency) for each of his five children and three grandchildren, which paid out yearly dividends. Trump appeared on the initial Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in 1982 with an estimated $200 million fortune split with his son Donald. That same year, Fred sold two Norfolk towers and some Hampton Roads military housing, the latter for $8–9 million, with perhaps $6.6 million pledged in promissory notes (which were apparently outstanding as of 2019). In 1998, a year before Fred's death, while he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease and his son Robert had power of attorney, the notes were transferred to limited liability companies connected to Trump Organization subsidiaries.
In December 1990, Donald Trump sought to amend his father's will, which according to Fred's daughter Maryanne Trump Barry, "was basically taking the whole estate and giving it to Donald", allowing him to "sell, do anything he wants ... with the properties". The Washington Post wrote that this "was designed to protect Donald Trump's inheritance from efforts to seize it by creditors and Ivana", whom he divorced that month. Fred rejected the proposal, and in 1991, composed his own final will, which made Donald, Maryanne, and Robert Trump of his estate. Trump's lawyer noted that Fred Jr.'s children, Fred III and Mary L. Trump, would be treated unequally because they would not receive their deceased father's share, and wrote to Trump that "Given the size of your estate, this is tantamount to disinheriting them. You may wish to increase their participation in your estate to avoid ill will in the future." In October 1991, Trump was diagnosed with "mild senile dementia", displaying symptoms such as forgetfulness.
Trump began to suffer from Alzheimer's disease by 1993, by which time the anticipated shares of Trump's estate amounted to $35 million for each surviving child. Most of Fred's buildings were transferred to two grantor-retained annuity trusts under his and his wife's names, which were used to give about two-thirds of the assets to their four surviving children, who bought the remaining third via annuity payments between 1995 and November 1997. The collective assets were valued at $41.4 million and in 2004 were sold for over 16 times this value, avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars in gift taxes.
Trump finally fell ill with pneumonia in mid-1999. He was admitted to Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, where he died at age 93 on June 25. His funeral was held at the Marble Collegiate Church, and was attended by over 600 people. His body was buried in a family plot at the Lutheran-Christian All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. Upon his death, Trump's estate was estimated by his family at $250 million to $300 million, though he had only $1.9 million in cash. His will divided over $20 million after taxes among his surviving children and grandchildren. His widow, Mary, died over a year later on August 7, 2000, in New Hyde Park, New York, at age 88. Her and Fred's combined estate was then valued at $51.8 million.
Following Trump's death, Fred Jr.'s children contested their grandfather's will, citing his dementia and claiming that the will was "procured by fraud and undue influence" by Donald, Maryanne, and Robert Trump. These three had claimed in their legal depositions that Fred Trump was "sharp as a tack" until just before his death, with Donald specifically denying any knowledge of his father's mental decline, including his 1991 dementia diagnosis. Barry later privately admitted that she knew her father had dementia at the time. Mary L. Trump recounts that in later years her grandfather forgot people he had known for decades, including her, whom he referred to as "nice lady".
In December 2003, it was reported that Trump's four surviving children would sell the apartments they acquired in 1997 to an investment group led by Rubin Schron, priced at $600 million; the sale occurred in May 2004. The 2016 leak of Donald Trump's tax information from 2005, which showed an income of $153 million, prompted The New York Times to investigate, leading to the 2018 exposé. The Times reported that the properties sold in 2004 were valued over 16 times their previously declared worth. Fred and Mary reportedly provided their children with over $1 billion altogether, which should have been taxed at the rate of 55% for gifts and inheritances (over $550 million), but records show that a total of only $52.2 million (about 5%) was paid. According to New York State law, individuals can be prosecuted on the basis of intentional tax evasion if a fraudulent return form can be produced as evidence; the statute of limitations does not apply in such cases.
Personal life
Trump met his future wife, Mary Anne MacLeod, an immigrant from Tong, Lewis, Scotland, at a dance party in the early to mid-1930s. Trump told his mother the same evening that he had met his future wife. Trump, a Lutheran, married Mary, a Presbyterian, on January 11, 1936, at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church with George Arthur Buttrick officiating. A wedding reception was held at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, and they had a single-night honeymoon in Atlantic City. The couple settled in Jamaica, Queens, and had five children: Maryanne Trump Barry (born 1937; a federal judge until her retirement), Fred Trump Jr. (1938–1981; an airline pilot with Trans World Airlines), Elizabeth Trump Grau (born 1942; a retired executive of Chase Manhattan Bank), Donald Trump (born 1946; the 45th U.S. president), and Robert Trump (1948–2020; a top executive of his father's property management company until his retirement).
Trump was a teetotaler and an authoritarian parent, maintaining curfews and forbidding cursing, lipstick, and snacking between meals. At the end of his day, Trump would receive a report from Mary on the children's actions and, if necessary, decide upon disciplinary actions. He took his children to building sites to collect empty bottles to return for the deposits. The boys had paper routes, and when weather conditions were poor, their father would let them make their deliveries in a limousine. According to Fred Jr.'s daughter, Mary L. Trump, Fred Sr. wanted his oldest son to be "invulnerable" in personality so he could take over the family business, but Fred Jr. was the opposite. Trump instead elevated Donald to become his business heir, teaching him to "be a killer", and telling him, "You are a king." Mary L. Trump states that Fred Sr. "dismantled [Fred Jr.] by devaluing and degrading every aspect of his personality" and mocked him for his decision to become an airline pilot. In 1981, Fred Jr. died at age 42 from complications due to his alcoholism.
After Elizabeth's birth, and with the U.S. becoming more involved in World War II, Trump moved his family to Hampton Roads's Virginia Beach. In 1944, as Trump's FHA funding lulled, they returned to Jamaica Estates, Queens, where Mary suffered a miscarriage. By 1946, they were living in a five-bedroom Tudor-style house Trump built in Jamaica Estates, and Trump purchased a neighboring half-acre lot, where he built a 23-room, 9-bathroom home. The family moved in during 1950–1951, and Fred and Mary remained there until their deaths. The couple was also given an apartment on the 63rd (in reality the 55th) floor of their son Donald's Trump Tower, which they rarely used.
During World War II, Trump began concealing his German ancestry. Notwithstanding his German accent, he denied that he spoke the language. He aligned himself with Jewish causes (in part due to the local prominence of Jews), with his contributionsapparently starting two weeks after U.S. entry into the warconvincing some that he practiced Judaism. Trump eventually claimed he was of Swedish origin, and in 1973, claimed to have been born in New Jersey; these deceptions about his heritage were sustained in the 1980s by Donald Trump and the author of Donald's first biography. During the 1980s, Fred became friends with the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Benjamin Netanyahu, later the prime minister of Israel.
According to Donald Trump, while his mother was watching the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II on television, Fred said while pacing around, "For Christ's sake, Mary. Enough is enough, turn it off. They're all a bunch of con artists."
Physical appearance
Trump had blue eyes. As a child, he had blond hair, which later darkened. As an adult, he stood about six feet tall. He employed both a slicked-back hairstyle and toothbrush mustache . After Trump's death, journalist Philip Weiss wrote that Trump was a "vigorous and imposing man with a square chest and prominent cheekbones" and that it was said that "Fred would rise just a little on his toes" to look taller when taking pictures with Donald. Dwight Garner wrote of Trump as photographed by Fred W. McDarrah: "With ... his acutely white teeth and his tuxedo, Fred Trump resembles a cut-rate magician who's wandered into the Sherry-Netherland."
By 1989, Trump had surgery on the right side of his face (according to family biographer Harry Hurt III to remove a part of his mandible afflicted with bone cancer), creating a conspicuous depression. Around 1990, he began wearing a wig to hide his hair loss. He also colored his eyebrows and mustache, surprising family members when this produced red to magenta hues. In 1991, he underwent a hip replacement at Manhattan's Hospital for Special Surgery; afterwards, he reputedly endeavored to leave his recovery room wearing only boxer shorts.
Philanthropy
Fred and Mary Trump supported medical charities by donating buildings. After Mary received medical care at the Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, they donated the Trump Pavilion rehabilitation building; Fred was also a trustee of the hospital. The couple donated a two-building complex in Brooklyn as a home for "functionally retarded adults", a New Jersey building valued at $4.75 million to United Cerebral Palsy (which Donald took credit for), and other buildings to the National Kidney Foundation (NKF). Trump donated one of his least profitable properties to the NKF, which according to The New York Times was "one of the largest charitable donations he ever made", with a deduction proportional to its stated value, claimed in his 1992 tax return as $34 million.
Fred reportedly also supported the Long Island Jewish Hospital and Manhattan's Hospital for Special Surgery; at the latter, he was a patient of orthopedist Philip D. Wilson Jr., the hospital's lead surgeon from 1972 to 1989.
The Trumps were active in The Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Lighthouse for the Blind. Fred supported the private Kew-Forest School, where his children attended and he served on the board of directors. Trump backed both Jewish and Israeli causes including Israel Bonds, donating the land for the Beach Haven Jewish Center, a synagogue in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and in 1952 serving as the treasurer of an Israel benefit concert featuring American easy-listening performers.
Trump also developed ties with the Democratic Party in New York, contributing to city politicians (including $2,500 to Mayor Wagner's 1961 campaign, enabling the construction of Trump Village). Together with Donald in the 1980s, Fred provided over $350,000 to city politicians including Mayor Ed Koch, Council president Andrew Stein, Controller Harrison J. Goldin, and four of the five borough presidents.
In October 2018, The New York Times reported in an exposé on Trump's financial records that they had found no evidence that he had made any significant financial contributions to charities.
Prestige
In the 1950s, Trump became an admirer of Protestant minister Norman Vincent Peale, whose businesslike approach to life and Christianity he admired. Mary L. Trump states that "Fred wasn't a reader, but it was impossible not to know about Peale's wildly popular bestseller," The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). Fred and family attended sermons by Peale at Manhattan's Marble Collegiate Church and in 1977, Peale officiated Donald's first wedding.
In 1985, Fred was awarded the Horatio Alger Award (for "distinguished Americans"), named for the 19th-century author of hundreds of rags-to-riches novels. Radio and television personality Art Linkletter introduced Trump at the ceremony, with Peale's wife (and previous award recipient), Ruth Peale, presenting him the award. During his speech, Trump stated that the key to his success was enthusiasm for his work and that he "used to watch other successful people ... that did good and that did bad and ... followed the good qualities that they had". He then (apparently erroneously) attributed to William Shakespeare the saying "Never follow an empty wagon because", pointing to his cranium, "nothing ever falls off". He went on to introduce his surviving nuclear family.
By the late 1980s, Trump had been photographed with a number of American celebrities, including actor Jack Nicholson and boxers Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson.
Legacy
Folk singer Woody Guthrie was a tenant of Beach Haven Apartments from 1950 to 1951. In his unrecorded song "Old Man Trump", he complains about the rent and accused Trump of stirring up racial hate "in the bloodpot of human hearts". Similarly, in an unreleased version of "Ain't Got No Home", Guthrie states:
Trump was indirectly claimed as a relative of Republican politician Fred J. Trump, a candidate in the 1956 Arizona gubernatorial election and correspondent of Richard Nixon during his 1960 presidential campaign against John F. Kennedy.
Jerome Tuccille's 1985 biography of Donald Trump repeats Fred's fabrication that he was born in New Jersey and erroneously states that his middle name was Charles (not Christ). Donald's The Art of the Deal (1987) also alleges that Fred was born in New Jersey and further that he was the son of an immigrant from Sweden (not Germany). The New York Post repeated the latter claim in its eulogy for Fred. As U.S. president, Donald falsely stated at least three times that his father was born in Germany. According to a 2021 book about Donald's last year as president, he once spoke disparagingly of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, stating, "I know the fucking krauts," and pointing to his father's portrait, continued, "I was raised by the biggest kraut of them all." Kraut is an ethnic slur for a German (particularly a soldier of either world war).
In his 1993 biography of Donald Trump, Harry Hurt III asserts that Fred was a philanderer, with his alleged Floridian affairs leading him to be known as the "King of Miami Beach". In 1989, he reputedly lectured Donald that he could "have a thousand mistresses" but not to get caught in a single specific extramarital affair. Additionally, Hurt wrote that he overheard Fred Trump talking about Donald and his wife Marla Maples as they departed for a flight, saying, "I hope their plane crashes", because then "all my problems will be solved".
During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, his father's 1927 arrest at a KKK march resurfaced. In mid-February 2017, a liberal Israeli newspaper asserted that both Donald Trump (who had called Fred his only 'hero') and Benjamin Netanyahu had inherited racism from their fathers, Trump against brown people and Netanyahu against Arabs. Three days later, the FBI declassified 389 pages from its early 1970s investigation of alleged racial discrimination by the Trump Organization. In his 2018 psychological profile of Donald, Justin A. Frank asserts that Fred was anti-Semitic. In 2020, Mary L. Trump supported this claim and said Fred could have been sympathetic to the KKK.
In May 2016, in an article about Donald Trump's pseudonyms, Fortune reported that his father had used the false name "Mr. Green" to anonymously inquire about property values. In October 2016, in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI released a small file it had on Fred; it includes a 1986 news article concerning political donations by Trump Management, an amply redacted 1991 memo implying the bureau received intel regarding ties to organized crime, and a background report on Trump Construction Corp.
In 2018, writing for New York magazine in response to the New York Times exposé, Jonathan Chait opined that many of Fred's contributions to Donald were by definition criminal in nature.
In mid-2020, liberal political action committee MeidasTouch cited the "empty wagon" quote from Trump's Horatio Alger Association speech in arguing that Donald Trump both squandered the fortune he inherited from his father and the "booming economy" left to him by the Obama administration. Mary L. Trump, in her 2020 book, Too Much and Never Enough, recounts "the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump's favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer's". In the book, Mary, a clinical psychologist, diagnoses Fred as a high-functioning sociopath.
Following Donald Trump's arrest in New York in 2023, some media outlets pointed out that his father had been arrested twice.
In popular culture
In the 2011 Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump, comedian Seth MacFarlane credited Donald's fortune to his father, mocking the former's "self-starter bullshit" and comparing their relationship to that of Jaden and Will Smith.
In late 2016, writing for Esquire, Nell Scovell detailed her attempt to visit the Trump family grave, noting her surprise at an online photo of the headstone, which depicts a "modest—and crowded—grave" given that it is for the family that produced Donald. Despite the cemetery's website listing the grave as one it would show "upon request", Scovell was told to return "after the election" and elusively jawboned by the cemetery's president, leading her to quip that the headstone could be embarrassingly located between those of two Adolphs. A 2018 satirical piece in McSweeney's depicts someone who attempts to go back in time to kill a newly christened Adolf Hitler and encounters Fred, who is in a hospital room with his wife and the newborn Donald.
Since 2018, Trump has been portrayed in various motion pictures. For instance, in an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Fred Willard plays him as a ghost proud of taking his crimes to his grave but vexed at Donald's failures. Invoking a photograph of the elderly Trump with mandibular damage, Nylon.com opined that the 2018 New York Times exposé "led people to know, perhaps for the first time, what Fred Trump looks like—and it turns out he bears resemblance to no shortage of fictional villains".
In 2019, American journalist and conspiracy theorist Wayne Madsen accused Fred of being a Nazi sympathizer on the basis of the German American Bund's presence in New York. In mid-2020, fact-checking company Logically concluded that there was a lack of incontrovertible evidence linking Trump to the Nazis.
In January 2023, the American tabloid Globe claimed that family insiders and the FBI thought Trump supported Hitler. Later that year, comedian Des Bishop invoked the link between the Great Depression and Hitler's rise to poweras well as Fred's alleged Nazismin cautioning that a potential future financial crisis could lead to Donald's .
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