President-elect Donald Trump has openly discussed getting money from his late father, Fred Trump, but not without apparently omitting a few zeros. During his 2015 campaign trail speech, Donald told a story about how his father gave him a ‘small loan’ of $1 million to help him get started in a business. However, new evidence contradicted the veracity of the claim.
In 2018, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, reaffirmed his account of events, saying that Donald had paid back the original $1 million loan and used it to amass a sizeable fortune. However, a 2018 The New York Times article went on to refute this story, revealing startling details of how much money Fred gave Donald. In actuality, Donald’s father had given him a staggering $413 million throughout the years. The Times investigation alleged that after Fred passed away in 1999, Donald and his family committed alleged ‘tax dodges’ by creating fictitious companies to manage the inherited wealth.
Tax papers showed only $41 million in property that was inherited, but their real worth was nearly a staggering $1 billion. Although Donald’s attorney angrily refuted the story, according to the investigation, the first loan from Fred was worth at least $60.7 million. Furthermore, the report alleged that Donald received an extravagant income of $200,000 when he was just three years old, which increased to around $1 million per year while he was a college student.
A Newsweek article from 2016 also revealed that Donald had used a $38 million line of credit that his father had set up in 1978. His taxes that year showed personal losses of $406,379, as per information filed to his casino regulator. By 1980, Fred had given his son loans totaling $7.5 million to get him out of debt. According to the outlet, Donald could repay these loans whenever it was convenient for him, and there would be no interest charged.
Over the course of my grandfather’s lifetime, he gifted and “loaned” Donald $413 million. And Donald still declared bankruptcy 6 times. He failed so badly that the banks needed to put him on a $425,000-a-month allowance.
— Mary L Trump (@MaryLTrump) September 11, 2024
Fred also stepped in to save Donald’s Trump Castle Casino Resort in the early 1990s from debt quicksand. This time, he gave a covert $3.35 million loan by buying chips for the establishment through a lawyer. The casino was allowed to keep the loan, but this unorthodox approach resulted in a $30,000 penalty by New Jersey’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, as per The Washington Post .
In a 1994 Vanity Fair interview, Donald recalled his father’s steadfast support during difficult times despite these financial gimmicks, highlighting Fred’s everlasting trust in him. “When the s**t hit the fan…my father would tell people, ‘Do yourself a favor. Go to the bookie and put a lot of money on Donald’s head,'” the Republican leader shared.
This article originally appeared 11 months ago.
