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 re-establish 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 work – to 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. Investigative journalist Wayne Barrett posits that Trump exaggerated the length of his career in 1934 while arguing in federal court why he should deserve a dissolved company's mortgage servicer.

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 co-executors 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. By February 1, 2019, Maryanne Trump Barry was being investigated for possible judicial misconduct regarding the schemes, but this was mooted later in the month due to her retirement.

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 (1937–2023), 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), 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 (c. 1983), 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 contributions – apparently starting two weeks after U.S. entry into the war – convincing 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."