Fred Trump


Frederick Christ Trump was a prominent real estate developer in New York City. He was the father of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, and Maryanne Trump Barry, a former United States Court of Appeals judge.
In partnership with his mother, Elizabeth Christ Trump, he began a career in home construction and sales. Their real estate development company was incorporated as "E. Trump & Son" in 1927. It grew to build and manage single-family houses in Queens, barracks and garden apartments for U.S. Navy personnel near major shipyards along the East Coast, and more than 27,000 apartments in New York City.
Trump was investigated by a U.S. Senate committee for profiteering in 1954, and again by the State of New York in 1966. Donald 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.

Early life and career

Trump's father, the German-American Frederick Trump, amassed a considerable fortune during the Klondike Gold Rush by running a restaurant for the miners. Frederick Sr. 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 Jr. was conceived in Bavaria, where his parents wished to residency, but Frederick Sr. was banished for dodging the draft. The family returned to New York on July 1, 1905, and moved to the Bronx, where Fred Jr. was born Frederick Christ Trump on October 11.
Fred Trump's younger brother, John G. Trump, was born in 1907. In September 1908, the family moved to Woodhaven, Queens. At the age of 10, Fred 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, and delivery boy. Meanwhile, his mother continued the real estate business Frederick Sr. had begun. Interested in becoming a builder, Fred took night classes in carpentry and reading blueprints. He also studied plumbing, masonry, and electrical wiring via correspondence courses.
After graduating, Trump obtained full-time work pulling wagonloads of building materials to construction sites. He found work as a carpenter and continued his education at Pratt Institute. Trump began his first house construction project in 1923, soon after graduating from high school. Elizabeth Trump partially financed Trump's houses, and held the business in her name because Fred had not reached the age of majority. They did business as "E. Trump & Son" as early as 1926, by which year, Trump had built 20 homes in Queens. The company was incorporated in 1927.

1927 arrest

On Memorial Day in 1927, over a thousand Ku Klux Klan members marched in a Queens parade to protest "Native-born Protestant Americans" being "assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City." 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. Multiple newspaper articles on the incident list Trump's address, which he is recorded as sharing with his mother in the 1930 census. In September 2015, Boing Boing reproduced the article, and Fred's son Donald Trump, then a candidate for president of the United States, told The New York Times, "that's where my grandmother lived and my father, early on." Immediately afterwards, he denied that his father had ever lived at that address, and said the arrest "never happened," and, "There was nobody charged."

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.
Around this same time, Trump and a partner acquired in federal court the mortgage-servicing subsidiary of Brooklyn's J. Lehrenkrauss & Co., which had gone bankrupt and subsequently been broken up amid charges of fraud. This gave Trump access to the titles of many properties nearing foreclosure, which he bought at low cost and sold for a profit. This and similar methods of accumulating capital quickly thrust him into the limelight as one of New York City's most successful businessmen.
Trump made use of the Federal Housing Administration's loan subsidies shortly after the program was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934. Trump said, "The working classes have been fully awakened as to the benefits of homeownership under the F.H.A. 25-year mortgage plan." By 1936, Trump had 400 workers, all white but of varying national origin, digging foundations for houses that would be sold from $3,000 to $6,250. Trump put properties for sale for prices like $3,999.99, saying his father had taught him the tactic, because, "One penny more and it won't sell." In the late 1930s, he used a yacht called the Trump Show Boat to advertise his business off the shore of Coney Island. It played patriotic music and floated out swordfish-shaped balloons which could be redeemed for $25 or $250 towards one of his properties. He was fined $2 by the New York City Parks Department for advertising without a license. In 1938, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle referred to Trump as the "Henry Ford of the home-building industry."

Personal life

Trump met his future wife Mary Anne MacLeod, an immigrant from Tong, Lewis, Scotland, at a party in the 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. Fred and Mary Trump settled in Jamaica, Queens, and had five children: Maryanne Trump Barry, Fred Trump Jr., Elizabeth Trump Grau, Donald Trump and Robert Trump.
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. Trump taught Donald to "be a killer," and told him "You are a king."
When World War II broke out, Trump moved his family to Virginia. During the war and until the 1980s, Trump denied that he spoke German and claimed that he was of Swedish origin. According to Trump's nephew, John Walter, "He had a lot of Jewish tenants and it wasn't a good thing to be German in those days." Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal falsely states that Fred Trump was the son of an immigrant from Sweden and born in New Jersey.
In 1981, Trump's oldest son, Fred Jr., died at age 42 from complications due to alcoholism. According to Mary L. Trump's 2020 book Too Much and Never Enough, Fred Jr. was expected to take over his father's business, but was mocked by him for his decision to become an airline pilot; Trump "dismantled by devaluing and degrading every aspect of his personality" and instead elevated Donald to become his favorite son and business heir.

Later career

During World War II, Trump built barracks and garden apartments for U.S. Navy personnel near major shipyards along the East Coast. After the war, he expanded into middle-income housing for the families of returning veterans, building Shore Haven in Bensonhurst in 1949, and Beach Haven near Coney Island in 1950. The same year, he authored an article advertising his apartments in the real estate section of the Brooklyn Eagle, which frequently featured him and his company. In 1963–64, he built Trump Village, an apartment complex in Coney Island, for $70 million. He built more than 27,000 low-income apartments and row houses in the New York area.
The company was called the Fred Trump Organization, also operating subsidiaries such as Trump Management and Trump Construction Corp.

Profiteering investigations

In early 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and other federal leaders began denouncing real estate profiteers. On June 11, 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 Federal Housing Administration. 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 $1.924million. Trump and Tomasello evidently obtained loans for $3.5million more than the 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 1966, Trump was again investigated for windfall profiteering, this time by New York's State Investigation Commission. 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.

Son becomes company president

Fred's son Donald joined his father's real estate business around 1968, and rose to become company president in 1971. He began calling the company the Trump Organization around 1973. In the mid-1970s, Donald received [|loans from his father] exceeding $14 million. This allowed Donald to enter the real estate business in Manhattan, while his father stuck to Brooklyn and Queens. "It was good for me," Donald later commented. "You know, being the son of somebody, it could have been competition to me. This way, I got Manhattan all to myself."
Fred's son Robert also worked for the company, becoming a top executive before his retirement.

Civil rights suit and code violations

Minority applicants turned away from renting apartments complained to the New York City Commission on Human Rights and the Urban League, leading the League and other groups to send test applicants to Trump-owned complexes in July 1972. They concluded that whites were offered apartments, while blacks were generally steered away. 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 filed a civil rights suit against the Trump Organization for infringing the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In response, Trump attorney Roy Cohn countersued for $100 million by implicating the DOJ for allegedly false accusations.
Court records showed that 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. A rental agent who worked with the company for two weeks said that Fred Trump told him that it was "absolutely against the law to discriminate," but later instructed him "not to rent to blacks." The agent said he was further advised to:
A consent decree between the DOJ and the Trump Organization was signed on June 10, 1975, with both sides claiming victory—the Trump Organization for its perceived ability to continue denying rentals to welfare recipients, 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, 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."
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.

Wealth and estate

Trump appeared on the initial Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in 1982 with an estimated $200 million fortune shared with his son Donald. In 1976, Trump had set up trust funds of $1million for each of his five children and three grandchildren, which paid out yearly dividends. By 1993, the siblings' anticipated shares of Trump's estate amounted to $35 million each. Upon Trump's death in 1999, Trump's estate was estimated by his family at $250million to $300million. His will divided $20million after taxes among his surviving children.
In 2015, Donald Trump claimed that his father had given him "a small loan of a million dollars," and the next year, said that he "built that into a massive empire" and paid back the loan. In October 2018, The New York Times published an exposé drawing on more than 100,000 pages of tax returns and financial records from Trump's businesses, and interviews with former advisers and employees. The Times concluded that his son Donald "was a millionaire by age 8," and that he had received $413million from Fred's business empire over his lifetime. According to the Times, the elder Trump loaned at least $60 million to his son, who largely failed to reimburse him.
Fred and Donald Trump have conducted a number of apparently fraudulent tax schemes. In 1987, when Donald's loan debt to his father exceeded $11million, Fred invested $15.5million in Trump Palace Condominiums and sold these shares to his son for $10,000, thus masking what could be considered a hidden donation, and benefiting from a tax write-off. When an $18.4million bond payment for Trump's Castle was due in late 1990, Fred used a bookkeeper to purchase $3.5million in casino chips, placing no bet, helping Donald avoid defaulting on his bonds; this action, illegal in New Jersey, resulted in a $65,000 fine. Donald Trump's lawyer denied the allegations of fraud and tax evasion, but divulged, "President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters. The affairs were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves and therefore relied entirely upon to ensure full compliance with the law." According to the exposé, Fred and Mary Trump provided their children with over $1 billion, which should have been taxed at the rate of 55% for gifts and inheritances, but records show that only $52.2 million was paid.

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; Fred was also a trustee of the hospital. The couple donated a two-building complex in Brooklyn as a home for "functionally retarded adults" and other buildings to the National Kidney Foundation of New York and New Jersey. The Cerebral Palsy Foundation of New York and New Jersey also received a building. Fred reportedly supported the Long Island Jewish Hospital and the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan.
The Trumps were active in The Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Lighthouse for the Blind. Fred also supported the Kew-Forest School, where his children attended and he served on the board of directors. Trump was so active in Jewish and Israeli causes that some believed that he belonged to the Jewish faith. This included donating the land for the Beach Haven Jewish Center in Flatbush, New York, supporting Israel Bonds, and serving as the treasurer of an Israel benefit concert featuring American easy-listening performers.
In 2018, The New York Times reported in their exposé on Trump's financial records that they had "found no evidence that Fred Trump made any significant... charitable donations".

Later years and death

During the 1980s, Fred Trump became friends with future Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, who at the time was the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations in Manhattan.
Trump and his wife were given an apartment on the 63rd floor of their son's Trump Tower, which they rarely used. The couple remained together until Fred's death. He suffered from Alzheimer's disease for the last six years of his life, and finally fell ill with pneumonia in June 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 is buried in a family plot at the Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. His widow, Mary, died on August 7, 2000, in New Hyde Park, New York, at age 88.
Before Trump's death, his lawyer had noted that the children of Fred Jr., Fred III and Mary L. Trump, would be treated unequally because they would not receive their deceased father's share. The lawyer 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." Following Trump's death, Fred Jr.'s children contested his will in probate court, claiming that Trump had been suffering from dementia and that the will was "procured by fraud and undue influence" by Donald, Maryanne, and Robert Trump.

Legacy

Folk icon Woody Guthrie was a tenant in one of Trump's apartment complexes in Brooklyn in 1950. In his unrecorded song "Old Man Trump," he accused his landlord of stirring up racial hate "in the bloodpot of human hearts."
Before becoming president, Richard Nixon corresponded with or about Trump, in a document maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration. In October 2016, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI released a file it had on Trump. It includes a 1986 New York Daily News article on Trump Management's campaign donations of over $350,000 to New York mayor Ed Koch; the bureau was also possibly concerned about ties to organized crime, but much of the relevant information is redacted.
In 1993, Harry Hurt III wrote in his book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump 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." According to publisher Simon & Schuster, Mary L. Trump's 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." Asked by Chris Wallace if his niece's allegations hurt him, Donald responded,
Comedian Seth MacFarlane credits Donald Trump's fortune to his father, comparing their relationship to that of Jaden and Will Smith. Fred Willard played Trump's ghost on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and an animated Fred Trump appears in episodes of Our Cartoon President. An episode of the 2019 television series Watchmen appears to depict him as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. A satirical piece in McSweeney's depicts someone who attempts to go back in time to kill Adolf Hitler, but instead arrives at the hospital room where Fred and Mary Trump are with their newborn baby Donald.