Donald Trump, a self-made sham ‘I
built what I built myself.”
This boast has long been at the core of the mythology of Donald Trump, Self-Made Billionaire. As the oft-told story goes, young Trump accepted a modest $1 million loan from his father, Fred, a moderately successful real estate developer from Queens, and — through smarts, hard work and sheer force of will — parlayed that loan into a multibillion-dollar global empire.
It’s a classic American tale of ambition and self-determination. Not Horatio Alger, exactly, but appealing and impressive, nonetheless.
Except that, like so much of what Trump has been selling the American public in recent years, this origin story was a sham — a version of reality so elaborately embellished that it qualifies as fan fiction more than biography. Also, as we’ve come to expect from Trump, the creation of this myth involved a big dose of ethically sketchy, possibly even illegal activity.
As an in-depth investigation by The Times has revealed, Trump is only selfmade if you don’t count the massive financial rewards he received from his father’s business beginning as a toddler. (By age 3, little Donald was reportedly pulling in an annual income of what today would be $200,000 a year.) These benefits included not only the usual perks of hailing from a rich, well-connected family — the connections, the access to credit, the built-in safety net. For the Trumps, it also involved direct cash gifts and tens of millions in ‘‘loans’’ that never charged interest or had to be repaid. Fred Trump even purchased several properties and business ventures, putting ownership either fully or partly in the names of his children, who reaped the profits.
As Donald Trump emerged as the favorite son, Fred made special deals and arrangements to increase Donald’s fortunes in particular. The Times found that, before Donald had turned 30, he had received close to $9 million from his father. Over the longer haul, he received upward of what, in today’s dollars, would be $413 million.
Along the way, it seems that certain liberties were taken with tax laws. The Times found that concocting elaborate schemes to avoid paying taxes on their father’s estate, including greatly understating the value of the family business, became an important pastime for Fred’s children, with Donald taking an active role in the effort. According to tax experts, the activities in question show a pattern of deception, a deliberate muddying of the financial waters. Asked for comment on The Times’ findings, a lawyer for the president provided a written statement denying any wrongdoing and asserting that, in fact, Trump had little to do with the dizzying transactions involving his family’s wealth.
With this glimpse into the inner workings of the Trump family finances, some of the grimier, ethically suspect aspects of Trump’s mythmaking begin to emerge — and with them, many questions about all that we still do not know about the man and his business empire. The American public has a right to some answers. Now would be an excellent time for Trump to hand over those tax returns on which he has thus far kept a death grip.
Increasingly, Trump’s willingness to bend the truth — and the rules — in the service of his myth looks less like innocent exaggeration than malicious deception. It’s not the golden, glittering success story he has been peddling. It’s shaping up to be something far darker.