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At the heart of President Donald Trump’s success story is this idea: He took a small amount of money – in the form of a loan from his father, Fred – and turned it into billions of dollars.

“My whole life really has been a ‘no’ and I fought through it,” Trump told a crowd in New Hampshire way back in October 2015. “It has not been easy for me, it has not been easy for me. And you know I started off in Brooklyn, my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars.”


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While the idea of Trump portraying himself as some sort of rags-to-riches story was always laughable – his father was a man of considerable means and a $1 million loan is not exactly chump change – it convinced lots and lots of people that Trump was like them. Or, more accurately, what they aspired to be. He was – and is – for many, the living embodiment of the American dream.

Which is why this story published by The New York Times on Tuesday night, which details a series of tax evasions that Trump and his father used over the years is so devastating. The piece is long and hugely detailed, but its most devastating lines – to the idea of the President as, essentially, a self-made man – are these:

“By age 3, Mr. Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. By the time he was 17, his father had given him part ownership of a 52-unit apartment building. Soon after Mr. Trump graduated from college, he was receiving the equivalent of $1 million a year from his father. The money increased with the years, to more than $5 million annually in his 40s and 50s.”

And remember that $1 million loan Trump talked so much about on the campaign trail? The Times reports that the total loan by Fred Trump to his son, Donald, was actually $60.7 million or – and brace yourself here – $140 million in today’s money. (The total amount of money Trump received from his father’s holdings is estimated at more than $400 million by the Times).


Link: Not a Cult