Reason # 17: Family History
Why do we need to defeat Donald Trump and ensure that a Democrat occupies the White House?
What was the Trump family like.
Friedrich Drumpf, Donald Trump’s grandfather made his fortune in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, running a successful restaurant, hotel and brothel. He changed his name to Trump and returned to his native Germany but was deported as a draft dodger and emigrated to New York City.
His son Frederic Christ Trump (he later changed his middle name) inherited the family real estate business and self-educated himself as a builder and real estate developer, establishing The Trump Organization in Queens. During his youth, German culture was widespread in the U.S. with German restaurants and beer gardens as common as Italian restaurants are today. Anti-German feelings became intense during World War 1 and grew far worse during WW2. The Trumps began telling others that their family was not German but had come from Sweden.
Fred Trump was a hard driving and ruthless businessman who enjoyed considerable success and accumulated money and property. He was also accused of sharp business dealings. The Trump Organization expanded enormously during WW2 and in 1954 President Eisenhower included Fred Trump’s name in a list of war profiteers. Fred was later investigated federally and in NY state for war profiteering.
He was a harsh disciplinarian and a strongly religious man, favoring the evangelism of Billy Graham. He has also been accused of bigotry. Fred Trump was arrested by NY police in 1927 at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Although the family denies that Fred was a Klan member, the Huffington Post has confirmed that the booking address was identical with Fred Trump’s home and that all seven men arrested were represented by the same attorney.
Donald Trump’s father was arrested, too. Twice. – The Washington Post
As early as 1950, one of his tenants, the noted songwriter Woody Guthrie, accused “Mean Old Trump”, in song lyrics, of discrimination against Afro-Americans in his Beach Haven apartments.
“I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
He stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his Beach Haven
Family project.”
Family members relate their relatives’ use of racial epithets about black and Jewish Americans. In 1973, after young Donald Trump had been appointed president of the real estate division, the company was sued for racial discrimination in violation of the Fair Housing Act, by the Department of Justice.
Frederick Trump died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease, in 1999 and left a will dividing large amounts of money and real estate holdings in equal shares to his four children, Frederick Jr., Maryanne, Donald and Robert. The inheritance was structured to avoid payment of hundreds of millions of dollars in inheritance taxes. Complicating matters, his oldest son Fred Jr. died at age 42 from complications of chronic alcoholism; his inheritance share did not pass through to his wife and two children, who each received only $200,000. Granddaughter Mary Trump accuses her uncle Donald and his two sibs of wrongfully changing his father’s will to deprive her and her siblings of their rightful shares and then coercing their acquiescence by withholding medical insurance from the disabled child of grandson Fred Trump III. The suit was denied because of a statute of limitations.
Does it astonish anyone that the scion of such a dysfunctional and cruel clan would turn out badly?
Have a heart; use your mind, search your conscience, and vote for Democratic candidates – across the ballot – on November. 5th.
Please share this message with your friends and please, add your thoughts, to expand upon what are only brief sketches here.
Fred Grannis
August 1, 2024