MORE! MORE! MORE!
Why plenty was never enough for Donald
IN his victory speech on Wednesday, Donald Trump thanked his father for his astonishing elevation to the job of world’s most powerful man. Well he might.
Trump had beaten down the door to the White House largely by winning over blue-collar voters, hard up and fed up in modern America.
It is a deep irony. Trump’s own background could not have been further from those of his constituents. Rather than being the man of the people he claims to be, Trump had a privileged upbringing.
Born in New York in 1946, Trump was still in nappies when his father, Fred, began paying into a trust fund for his offspring. Trump’s share was about $12 000 a year — even as a baby, he enjoyed an income four times the value of a typical family.
Fred Christ Trump had made his money in real estate, building family homes in Queens and naval barracks along the East Coast. It was claimed he took kickbacks to hand out contracts and in 1954, when Donald was just eight, was investigated by a Senate committee for profiteering from public contracts.
At the age of 21, Fred was arrested for involvement in a riot in Queens in which the Ku Klux Klan had fought fascist supporters loyal to Benito Mussolini. Fred, according to a news report of the day, had been wearing the robes of the Klan.
When he died in 1999 at the age of 93, Fred Trump left in his will — bitterly disputed by the family — almost $300-million. Donald, his father’s second but favourite son, would again reap the rewards.
It’s not surprising then that Trump told his supporters in his victory speech: “First I want to thank my parents who I know are looking down on me right now. Great people. I’ve learnt so much from them. They were wonderful in every regard. I had truly great parents.”
While his mother, Mary Anne Macleod, arrived in New York from the isle of Lewis in the Hebrides in 1930, Fred Trump, whom she married six years later, was the son of a German immigrant. The Trump family — originally Drumpf but changed to Trump at some point in the 17th century — came from the southwest of Germany. Friedrich Trump, the president-elect’s grandfather, left Germany to avoid military service in 1885 and got on a steamer to New York.
He made his way to Seattle, opening a restaurant with a brothel attached before moving to Canada to cash in on the Klondike gold rush. He would open a bar and again procure prostitutes. Friedrich briefly moved back to Germany, where he met and married Elizgave abeth Christ, a “well-endowed blonde” 12 years his junior. David Cay Johnston, who has written a devastating biography of Trump, remarked in The Making of Donald Trump: “Trump men favouring busty blondes would become a family pattern.”
There are other traits picked up by Trump. Like his grandfather, the soon-to-be commander-in-chief would also dodge military service, albeit some 80 years later, avoiding the Vietnam draft after a doctor fortunately discovered a bone spur in his foot.
Trump attended the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in economics, before joining the family firm. He claimed to be worth $200 000 on graduation. Trump would benefit from his elder brother Fred jnr’s lack of interest in their father’s business dealings. Fred jnr, dashingly handsome, lacked the profit-at-all-costs drive of his father.
Instead, he became an airline pilot, marrying an airline stewardess his father did not approve of. But he up his job because of his alcoholism and died in 1981 at the age of 43.
Trump has said he is teetotal as a consequence of witnessing his brother’s demise. Again, in his victory speech Trump praised his elder brother: “I also want to thank . . . my late brother Fred, great guy, fantastic guy.”
When Fred Trump snr died, Fred jnr’s children were left out of the will entirely. It led to a bitter legal action in which it was claimed that in retaliation for bringing the action, Trump, acting along with his siblings Robert and Maryanne, withheld payments for $300 000 of medical care for one of Fred jnr’s grandsons, a baby suffering from a neurological condition that produces violent seizures.
Trump was unrepentant. “Why should we give him medical coverage?” he told a New York Daily News reporter in 2000. When the reporter asked him if he feared he might come across as cold-hearted, given the baby’s medical condition, Trump replied: “I can’t help that. It’s cold when someone sues my father. Had he come to see me, things could very possibly have been much different for them.” POWER GRAB: Donald Trump speaking in Charleston, West Virginia, during his election campaign; he appealed to the working class but was born into privilege DYNASTY: The Trump siblings — from left, Robert, Elizabeth, Freddy, Donald and Maryanne — in an undated photo. Freddy Trump, who died in 1981, was eight years older than Donald
By the time of Fred jnr’s death in 1981, Trump had already taken over the family business, renaming it the Trump Organisation. He had also inherited a seemingly insatiable appetite for young women, although Johnston in his biography questions Trump’s abilities at both, suggesting that both “Trump the Modern Midas” and “Trump the Great Don Juan” are creations of his own public relations making. Psychologists have wondered if he suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder.
Trump’s alleged sexual harassment of women over the years became a major theme of the election, threatening briefly to derail him, while his (dis)regard for women — he vilified one former female employee as “ugly as a dog” — was also well aired during the campaign.
In business, he is accused of exaggerating his successes. Between 1991 and 2009, hotel and casino businesses owned by Trump were declared bankrupt six times. A leaked tax return from 1995 showed his business empire had made an astonishing loss of $916-million, meaning under federal rules he may have escaped paying income tax for the next 18 years.
Trump married Ivana Zelnícková in 1977 and six years later had built Trump Tower, a 58-storey skyscraper on Fifth Avenue. Trump, with his beautiful Czech-born wife on his arm and with his skyscraper in his property portfolio, had well and truly arrived at the heart of New York society.
They had three children — Donald jnr, Ivanka and Eric — but the marriage ended in 1991 when Ivana discovered Trump was having an affair with Marla Maples. Ivana would walk away with a reported $20-million settlement. In 1993, two months after having a daughter, Tiffany, Maples and Trump married. They divorced six years later.
He married his third and current wife, Melania Knavs, a model from Slovenia, in 2005. They have one child, Barron.
In 2003, Trump, with his bouffant comb-over hair, cemented his celebrity by starring in the reality TV programme The Apprentice .He was sacked from the show in June last year over offensive comments about immigrants, but by then Trump had set his sights on the White House.
It wasn’t his first tilt at power. He had considered running for president in 1988 on the Republican ticket, again in 2000 as a candidate for the fringe Reform Party and again as a Republican in 2004 and 2012.
The drive for running this time is said to stem from humiliation at the hands of President Barack Obama at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Trump had been one of the leading conspiracy theorists claiming Obama was not born in the US. But at the dinner, Obama displayed his US birth certificate on a video screen. Turning to Trump, he said: “Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
The audience was in stitches while Trump sat stony faced. He is notoriously thin-skinned and it may just be that one incident that spurred him to run one more time for the highest office. Obama isn’t laughing now. — © The Daily Telegraph, London Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.sundaytimes.co.za