Meet the Trumps: From Immigrant to President (2017) Movie Script
I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear...
...that I will faithfully execute...
...the office of President
of the United States...
...and will to the best of my ability...
...preserve, protect and defend...
...the Constitution
of the United States...
...so help me God.
Donald Trump will be the 45th President
of the United States.
Commander-in-Chief of the
United States Armed Forces.
The most powerful office in the world.
But who is Donald Trump?
What is he really like?
And what are his beliefs?
To find the answer,
we're going back to his beginnings.
To tell the story
of the Trump family.
From Donald's immigrant grandfather,
to his ambitious parents,
his stubborn brother, and his three wives.
Once you know the Trump family,
you'll have a better idea
of Donald's past,
and what this man
would be capable of...
MEET THE TRUMPS: IMMIGRANT TO PRESIDENLet me tell you a story.
The definitive story
of immigrant triumph,
the epitome of the American dream.
How Donald Trump's grandfather,
Friedrich Trump,
left Germany in the 1880s,
a poor barber, managed to make a small fortune in the United States.
And how his son, Fredrick Trump,
managed to amass an even bigger fortune.
And how his son, Donald, became
President of the United States.
This is a striking story,
filled with ups and downs,
courage and resilience,
it involves hotels, bars,
prostitution, and run-ins with the law.
And if you really want to understand
what motivates the President
of the United States,
and who he really is,
you have to hear this story.
Donald Trump's journey to
the White House begins with his grandfather.
Friedrich was the youngest son
in a family of vintners
who lived in Kallstadt,
a small town in Germany.
In 1885, due to the economic crisis
his family was facing,
Friedrich left home
in the middle of the night
and emigrated to the United States.
Friedrich was only 16 years old
when he arrived by ship in New York
hoping to make a fortune.
Friedrich arrived in the United States
with a suitcase, just one suitcase.
He didn't speak English.
He was very shrewd.
He started working as a barber
in downtown Manhattan.
New York was an extraordinary melting pot
of immigrants,
and Manhattan a crowded suburb.
Friedrich Trump worked there for several
years, saving every cent he earned,
but in the United States
of the 1890s,
the action was happening on the other side of the country.
He bought a train ticket
for $35
and headed for Seattle,
the Pacific Northwest coast.
When Friedrich Trump arrived in Seattle,
he came across saloons
full of card rooms,
people gambling, fighting,
construction everywhere.
And apparently he headed
for Washington Street, directly.
The most dangerous area
of a complex city.
People were practically
shot in the head
when they opened
the door to their apartment.
At just 23 years old, Friedrich Trump
hired two Italian chefs,
and dared to open a restaurant.
Exactly here
used to be the Dairy restaurant.
This was Fred Trump's restaurant.
This is it. Not much is left,
just cracks in the asphalt.
But in 1891, this was the first
successful Trump venture.
Why did he come here?
Because this place
was full of opportunities.
It wasn't about being locked
in an office counting cash,
because these were violent times.
Even Friedrich's
two Italian chefs
ended up fighting in his bar.
He could have lost everything.
He was gambling, who knows if he could handle a restaurant,
it was his first time running one.
He had big dreams and was trying to achieve them.
Friedrich was making money but not enough,
the real action was happening further north.
So he decided to change his destiny.
He proved he had a good eye for business,
and great initiative to get moving.
He's also aware that when the economy changes,
he needs to change too.
A little bird told him that John D. Rockefeller,
the richest man in America, was about to set up a mining operation
in a place called Monte Cristo, also in Washington state.
And off he goes.
It's an arduous journey into the mountains.
Friedrich's idea was to build his own building.
The first Trump Hotel.
The neighborhood where Trump had his hotel
was in the wrong part of town.
But it's a popular place, it's entertaining,
it's where men came on Saturday nights after a hard day
after working in the mines, in the forests,
and they wanted to spend their money, have a good time.
There are girls, there's food, gambling everywhere.
One of the men who worked there described it as hell's hole.
It definitely wasn't located in the refined part of town,
not in the business district.
Then in 1897, it came to light that miners had found gold
high up in the Canadian Rockies.
There were rumors that on the banks of the Klondike River
gold nuggets were being extracted directly from the earth.
And that's precisely where Grandpa Trump saw his next opportunity.
The winters in the Northwest are harsh.
Up in the mountains the snow is deep, avalanches sweep men away...
But Trump was a man who wasn't afraid of challenges.
Even though he was young and had no experience in the mountains.
So he packed all his provisions,
while the other men slept in the streets,
to join the bonanza and cash in.
And so it was.
Friedrich joined the miners on the brutal climb
up the infamous Dead Horse Trail.
Named because horses literally collapsed and died
along the side of the trail.
Then Grandpa Trump gets the idea to set up a tent restaurant.
He turns the dead horses into food.
He's now serving horse meat burgers.
Friedrich Trump was literally beating dead horses.
Trump is a man who seizes opportunities wherever he sees them.
Around May of 1898,
Friedrich Trump had run out of horses for his burgers,
so he built a two-story hotel in Bennett, a small town.
But just as he started operating, the miners were gone.
So what does he decide to do?
He takes the hotel building, slides it down the mountain,
puts it on a barge, and sets off for Whitehorse.
Unfortunately, he encounters Class 1 rapids
and the hotel disintegrates on the barge.
But he picks up the pieces of wood, rebuilds the hotel,
and puts it right in the heart of Whitehorse,
on a plot of land in an excellent area that doesn't even belong to him.
These are the last vestiges of the Old West in the United States.
Tough men and the complete absence of law enforcement.
And Friedrich Trump is not the type of man to go looking
for tiny bits of gold in icy waters.
He comes up with a better idea.
He decides to sell food and liquor to the local men,
and upstairs, he had "meretrices" that's what they were called.
Yes, Friedrich Trump was also a pimp.
There are three thousand miners
to the new hotel in the Arctic,
day after day,
and if they didn't have money to pay,
they could pay with gold or gold dust.
Grandpa Trump was amassing a great fortune.
But soon, with the liquor, the fights,
and the prostitution,
everything got out of control,
and the mounted police arrived in town,
and they started shutting down
the establishments.
He took it as a sign that he should leave.
Just as he had left Monte Cristo with a profit,
he left Whitehorse with some savings.
He knew when to leave,
he had a business plan in motion,
and then he left at the right time.
The theme that surrounds
the Trump family,
the one thing they could never
forget,
no matter how much money they made,
no matter how successful they were,
was conformity.
That relentless desire to keep going,
to find the next opportunity.
It's a very American story,
in that sense,
and a relentless story in turn.
But that's the story according to Trump.
While many struggle
for survival,
Friedrich Trump
is doing supremely well.
Now Trump's grandfather is heading
back to his hometown of Kallstadt, Germany.
But he can't imagine the amount of trouble
awaiting him.
KALLSTADGERMANY
This is the picturesque wine route
in Germany.
Beautiful vineyards
and gingerbread houses.
This is where it all began
for Donald Trump.
In 1901, Friedrich was back
in his native Germany,
hoping to find a wife
and start a new life.
But it wouldn't be that simple.
This relatively functional building
is the local state archive.
And within its walls
lies a document
that reveals a rather uncomfortable truth
about Donald Trump's grandfather.
about Donald Trump's grandfather.
- Okay.
- After you.
Friedrich had to reapply for German citizenship
since he had stayed in the United States for more than eight years.
This is the document.
What are we looking at?
Letters from the government
and the town council.
I see the Trump surname here. What does this letter say?
This is a letter written
by the mayor of Kallstadt.
The mayor is asking the
state commissioner of Durkheim
to grant Trump citizenship
again.
So the mayor
wants Trump back?
The mayor wants him back
because he's rich and reputable.
But they needed the consent
of the higher authorities?
From the Bavarian state, yes.
From the Bavarian state,
which he hasn't gotten yet.
Then let's talk about that.
In '85, he left without permission,
and without his military service certificate.
How interesting.
This is the key document
where the Bavarian state
informs Trump
that it will not grant him
Bavarian citizenship
because when he emigrated
to the United States in 1886,
he did so without permission,
and without having completed
his Bavarian military service.
Therefore, they are denying him
Bavarian citizenship.
Friedrich wrote several letters
to the Bavarian authorities,
begging them to allow him to stay
in Germany, all without success.
He received a deportation notice
from the crown prince of Bavaria.
So this is goodbye, then?
He didn't appeal after this?
No.
The course of history, ultimately,
depends on this document.
Because without this document,
there would be no Donald Trump,
the president
of the United States of America.
So Friedrich Trump
leaves Germany
with a deportation notice hanging over him.
But with a good amount of money.
The fortune he amassed when he lived here
during the Gold Rush.
So he did what the Trumps
always do,
he reinvented himself here in the United States.
He traveled with Elizabeth Christ,
his new wife.
A neighbor from Kallstadt
of humble origins.
Friedrich returned to his old profession
and opened a barber shop
on Wall Street.
I think Friedrich was waiting
for the right moment when he returned.
He lived practically in a tenement,
and offered his barber services
in the neighborhood.
And that's how he made a living.
And when he found an opportunity,
he went after it.
He went across the East River bridge
to a suburb called Queens
where Friedrich decided to dive
into the property business.
Queens was starting to take off,
but you wouldn't necessarily have imagined
that this was the place of the future.
But Friedrich was someone
who knew how to adopt a broad perspective.
Things were going well
for Friedrich.
The only exception I can think of
that has come to light in recent years
is that he drank too much,
and this problem reappears later
in the Trump family saga.
Prone to alcohol consumption or not,
Friedrich was a hard worker.
By 1918 his net worth
was half a million dollars
in today's money.
He and Elizabeth had 3 children,
including Fred, Donald's father.
Friedrich could have been very big
in Queens and in real estate,
but unfortunately for him
and his family
he died during the influenza epidemic
in 1918.
The entire Trump family
is buried in this cemetery.
The first was Friedrich Trump,
who died at 49,
leaving Elizabeth a widow
and their three children
to fend for themselves.
This also meant that his eldest son,
Fred Trump
had to take on
all the responsibility.
Fred Trump was a worthy son of his father,
at just 12 years old when his father died, he learned to draw blueprints,
he built garages for his neighbors,
and he was too young to have a bank account or a business in his name,
so his mother had to set up the company as Elizabeth Trump & Son.
The two began to explore land and build houses.
Fred, Donald's father, built his first house at just 17.
He would soon be solely in charge of the family business.
Of these three men, Friedrich, Fred, and Donald,
people used to say that it was really Fred, Donald's father,
the only intelligent one in the family.
Fred was only 24 years old
when he had to face his biggest business challenge.
The US economy collapsed.
Despair is the land they inherit and inhabit.
The darkest times represent great opportunities for the stealthy.
President Roosevelt announces his plan to save the economy.
This included government financing
to develop construction programs.
Fred Trump was the first to arrive at the New York regional office,
once the program was revealed.
And he started moving quickly
to build a large number of single-family homes,
and eventually apartments.
It's ironic
that the Trump business empire,
as it was forged in the 30s, was in many ways
a consequence of liberal policies.
And he was the first state capitalist, exploiting every dollar he could.
And all this through political connections.
This was the new frontier,
his father had been on the last physical frontier in the Northwest.
Fred was after the new frontier, meaning the federal government.
There was a real estate market in Brooklyn that went bankrupt.
And the courts decided who was awarded the mortgages,
and he used the right levers, the political levers in the courthouse, and took over all the properties.
And then he was able to use all those properties
to build his own housing and construction company.
So, he was basically a creature of the courthouse.
The rise of the Trump empire lies in that courthouse document.
Fred undoubtedly used his connections in high places,
but between 1935 and '42, he also built homes for over 2,000 families.
And now another immigrant enters the picture.
Mary Anne MacLeod.
A beautiful girl from the Isle of Lewis, part of the Hebrides.
A poor, bleak, remote, windswept place.
Donald Trump's mother grew up in a crofter's cottage
and Scottish Gaelic was her native tongue.
Tell us about the scene.
What was the Isle of Lewis like in the 1920s?
There was mass migration.
Mary MacLeod, later known as Mary Trump,
was born in 1912 in the village of Tong, on Lewis.
My grandparents were born in that village.
My mother too.
And they were part of that immigrant generation.
And Lewis, of course, like the rest of Britain and Europe,
had been hard hit by World War I.
Lewis had a particularly bitter experience.
Many men lost their lives.
The lure of migration, of a new world,
away from the poverty and tragedy
of the early 20th century in Europe,
was quite strong, and Mary was part of that movement.
What do we know about Mary MacLeod when she arrived in the US?
What's the first thing she does?
Mary got a permit to work as a domestic servant upstate New York.
Then she met Fred Trump, a handsome man, at a dance.
There was obviously an attraction and a reciprocity.
But they came from different social classes.
Sure, absolutely, and the transformation is impressive.
She goes from domestic servant to domestic goddess,
almost F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque.
It's like a story out of The Great Gatsby.
She was beautiful,
but also very self-assured, I think.
And I really think that shone through when she met Mr. Trump.
And her son has some of that too.
Absolutely.
Mary married Fred Trump in 1936.
She was brave, no doubt.
And I think her ambitions were in sync with Fred's ambitions.
And I think she felt she had made a good deal.
Fred built Mary a Tudor-style mock house in Queens,
the perfect place for their new family.
And while being a mother and wife,
she began to become part of the Trump empire.
She was one of those women who would go in her fur coat,
and in her Rolls-Royce to collect the coins
from the laundromats where people put their pennies to wash clothes,
in one of the apartment buildings.
But that was Mary.
This was her idea of what a wealthy American woman should do.
You go out in style and glamour, but you still go and collect the coins.
By 1938, Fred Trump had built an impressive real estate empire.
The Daily Eagle nicknamed him the "Henry Ford of housing."
Fred was gaining so much fame that he had to focus on his public image.
He wasn't someone who enjoyed the spotlight, particularly.
His daughter told me that Fred once took a Dale Carnegie course
on how to win friends and influence people,
because he was so shy that he hated being in front of the public.
But it wasn't long before Fred embraced the change.
This is him promoting the Trump brand around New York.
However, the Trump Empire would soon have its greatest businessman.
I know it's a bit chilly and there's some sun on the beach,
but imagine this place in July of 1939,
packed with sunbathers in sweltering heat,
and suddenly everyone hears this noise:
The US national anthem blaring from speakers.
The speakers floating on a barge, a big 60-foot boat,
right there, out at sea.
And as the barge moves, you hear the music,
and out of nowhere appear these giant letters,
20-foot-high letters spelling: T-R-U-M-P.
For the first time in the world, the Trump brand
is introduced in such a public way.
And it's Fred Trump trying to sell his new apartments,
just a few blocks from here, in Brooklyn.
This was the first display of Trump's showmanship.
It was just the beginning of a long story.
Soon the Trump empire would have its greatest businessman,
joining the Trump family in Queens.
So this is the Tudor-style imitation house.
It's the house where Fred and Mary Trump
lived towards the end of World War II.
And here, in 1946, Fred and Mary had their fourth child,
weighing a few pounds, Donald J. Trump enters the universe.
When Donald was 4 years old,
the Trumps decided to move
literally around the corner from where he was born.
Fred built an imitation colonial mansion.
The biggest house on the block.
But the Trump family still had a long journey ahead.
Fred, Donald Trump's father, amassed much of his fortune
after World War II ended.
When the soldiers returned home,
President Eisenhower announced a major financing program
for building homes for war veterans.
That was perfect for Fred.
He operated under the basis of large government financing,
and he took this money with both hands and was happy to do it.
Fred's scam was very simple,
he would ask the government for more money than he needed
to build the houses,
and basically kept the leftovers.
The key to this was knowing the rules,
the real rules,
not the rules
that the naive follow.
Fred needed important connections
for his scam,
including a regional official
named Tommy Grace.
And he hired George Grace.
Fred hired George Grace,
Tommy's brother
to be his lawyer.
So guess what?
The money just
landed in his hands.
Fred managed to build
thousands of new homes,
but he also amassed a huge fortune.
When President Eisenhower found out
what Trump was doing,
he was furious.
It was a national scandal.
The Senate Committee started investigating
and Fred was called to testify.
People are dragged
into these Senate hearings.
One of the men suffers a heart attack
after testifying.
Most of it is televised.
It's horrible.
Suddenly he was in all the news.
Four million dollars in government funds
were found
in Fred's bank account.
Which was not a good sign.
Fred Trump was called to testify
and said:
"I didn't break any laws
and isn't this what any business
in this country should do?
Make money."
In fact, he didn't break any laws,
he pushed it,
he bent it, he twisted it as much as he could,
but he didn't break it.
This is a guy smart enough to see the loopholes.
He knew how to identify where to exploit something
without breaking the law.
Somehow he manages
to get out of trouble
by declaring that the money was
simply there in his bank account.
The Senate hearings had
damaged Fred's reputation.
And at home there were also problems.
By this time, Fred and Mary had five children to deal with,
and one of them was starting to act out.
Donald, in essence, was a spoiled kid.
He was rough, violent with other children, disrespectful.
Always disrupting classes at his school.
He eventually crossed the line when he and a schoolmate
went to New York City, to Manhattan,
bought some switchblades,
and his father found the switchblade and said, "No more,
time for military school."
Also at New York Military Academy was Sandy McIntosh.
He had the chance to meet the young Donald.
I think he and his father
planned together, perhaps,
to create what they would call "the Donald brand."
When Donald's parents came to visit him on weekends,
they always brought him a different girl.
The girl was always well-dressed, in expensive outfits.
In fact, in my opinion, they looked like models.
Not a normal girl I could meet,
but a model, someone professional, somehow.
So every week it was a different girl.
For hanging out with these girls, he was labeled the playboy.
This was an all-boys military academy.
So being labeled a playboy was difficult
since girls weren't allowed there.
But Donald didn't win the award for most popular student.
I think some of the boys thought Trump looked down on them,
that he had a certain air of superiority.
But the problem I had with Donald,
was that, I think there was a kind of emptiness inside him.
If you don't have empathy, you would be, as Shakespeare would say,
someone destined for "stratagems and spoils."
There was a mantra that was passed down to the Trump boys
as they were growing up,
and this mantra came from his father,
who used to say: "You are killers, you are kings."
And by that he meant
they had to be ruthless,
prevail, rule.
The history of the Trumps is really
a succession from Friedrich,
from Friedrich to Fred,
down to Freddy, Fred's eldest son.
The plan was for Freddy
to become the natural heir,
and take over the entire real estate empire.
Freddy Trump was the family member
you would have loved to meet.
He was a brilliant, captivating,
funny guy.
He loved to have fun, he partied,
he liked to drink beer,
maybe two, six,
but he was the kind of person
you wanted to share with.
His father assigned Freddy a task.
He asked him to take charge
of one of the buildings.
And what did Freddy do?
He decided to change the windows to make the
place more pleasant for the tenants.
His father was horrified
by his son's indulgence,
and his lack of business sense.
And that confirmed to him
that Freddy didn't have what it took.
He wasn't good at it,
he didn't enjoy it,
and he didn't do a good job.
Freddy felt discouraged,
disheartened, depressed.
It wasn't what he wanted to do.
He left, he became a pilot,
which could be seen as an achievement,
but in the Trump household
it didn't seem to be.
With Freddy now a pilot,
Donald was next in line,
and he really wanted to take over
the billionaire empire.
I had a brother
who was a wonderful man,
he had an absolutely
brilliant personality.
He was handsome, wonderful,
people liked him, he was nice,
he trusted everyone.
He was truly a good human being
and people took advantage of that.
By the late 1960s,
Donald had finished his studies.
He graduated with a degree in economics
from the Wharton School of Business.
And with Fred's reputation in tatters
due to the Senate hearings,
it was very clear that Donald,
the blue-eyed young man,
he had to take over the company.
He will finally also prove
what I feel will be the most successful convention.
At 25, he was named president and as he spoke,
his father watched and took notes.
That's the first part of the financing.
Then Donald Trump would meet his closest advisor.
The most successful...
What's most striking about Donald's life
is that at 28, he meets Roy Cohn.
And anyone who knew Roy Cohn during that time
could only feel revulsion.
I knew Roy Cohn,
He was one of the most repulsive characters I've ever met in my life.
I felt like I was facing Satan.
Rude. And the word rude doesn't even begin to cover it.
A quarrelsome, cold man, a real son of a bitch,
would be how I think most people would describe him at that time.
This man was a reptile.
He used to eat with his hands,
he had toads all over his house in Greenwich Village.
He was an extremely eccentric man.
The godfathers of the 5 mafia families were represented by him.
And he was gay.
And he was the most anti-gay man you could find in New York.
Young Donald meets this man and says, 'He has to work for me.'
'He has to work for me.'
Donald Trump now has an advisor who is not part of his family,
although he is treated as if he were.
Roy Cohn was the second most influential person after Fred.
And I think it was a pretty close competition.
TRUMP VILLAGE WESCohn was assigned to defend them from the latest family scandal.
For years, the rumor circulated
that the Trumps were refusing to rent apartments here at Trump Village
to Black and Hispanic people.
And in the early 1970s,
the Justice Department in Washington really started investigating.
Elyse Goldweber, 27, was leading the investigation.
She was very inexperienced,
and didn't know much about the Trumps.
Except that they were wealthy,
very rich, a family in the real estate business.
They sent in what they called "test people",
undercover applicants with exactly the same credentials and references.
The only difference was the color of their skin.
What these tests showed
was that there were no apartments for Black people.
And that there were apartments available for white people.
I felt it was crystal clear that they had broken the law.
And in fact, we later found out
that if any minority: Black, Hispanic, etc., applied,
they would put the letter C on their application, C for "color."
Elyse's department filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization
for violating the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Roy Cohn claimed the Trumps were being persecuted by the government,
and filed a counterclaim for $100 million.
It was surprising.
A bit of that style of not backing down and fighting back,
that we see in Donald Trump now. Roy Cohn was the master of that.
And so the case went to court.
His father, he appeared to be a nice man,
he was very professional.
Even back then, Donald already liked to strut.
And with a somewhat dismissive attitude towards us.
When I took his deposition, regardless of whether you asked him a question or not,
he had trouble focusing, you had to explain it to him again.
And then, during the break, we'd have coffee and a snack,
and he would come up to me, you know, during the 10-minute break
and say, "Look, Elyse, you wouldn't want to live with them either."
I mean, I think that was a pretty chilling statement.
Malicious, repulsive.
Two years later, they reached an agreement,
and the Trumps had to show a list of all available rentals
to the Justice Department's Housing Center,
guaranteeing that racial prejudice would not continue.
And although many people describe it as a defeat,
in his signature style, he declared it a great victory.
And now he's free to set his next target: Manhattan.
Donald Trump is in his twenties,
but for him, even at that young age, that, over there, is the ultimate prize:
The Manhattan real estate market.
Fred, his father,
never moved the empire from this side of the East River to that side.
But Donald was convinced he wanted to conquer Manhattan,
the island where his grandfather had arrived so many years ago.
But it wouldn't be easy.
Donald always felt a certain aversion
towards New York's wealthy families.
They always looked down on him, but Donald didn't care.
I mean, he was the rebel within that circle.
Donald Trump, a tough man in a tough city.
Steve, you're going to have to start leaning on these people a bit,
because this is getting a little ridiculous, in my opinion.
While Donald made his plans in Manhattan, his father supported him.
But his father's advice went far beyond business.
It was a way of perceiving the world.
Fred always instilled this idea in his family.
I don't want to say a master race, but that there are certain...
more attractive people, and more successful, and that,
when they married, they created these super children.
And I think Donald really took that to heart.
And it's at this moment in our story
that another extraordinary character enters the picture.
You don't need to have a master's degree.
You can go to a hotel, be a maid,
a month later you get promoted and become head of housekeeping.
And a year later you can go after your current boss's job.
Because you have to, you have to climb,
and you have to try and you have to protect your family,
have self-confidence and leave the past behind.
Just focus on the future.
Ivana was sort of a female version of Donald.
She was the perfect match for him.
Mrs. Trump. Hello.
Excuse me.
I think they both shared that vision of the New York royal couple.
Donald felt a strong connection with Ivana.
He told his mother he had found the woman he wanted to marry.
I knew they were dating and they came over once, we had tea,
and that's where they announced they wanted to get married.
And obviously they had our blessing.
They had our blessing.
Ivana was a nice girl.
Donald and Ivana had three children:
Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.
I think for a while, Donald was the happiest he could be
in his home life.
They were a power couple,
and together they felt they could take over the world.
They both started the construction of Trump Tower.
This was what he intended to achieve
by building a gigantic building on Fifth Avenue,
and by putting his name in gold letters, gigantic letters, on the front door:
"TRUMP," here I am.
This was bold, cheap.
This is something that his neighbors on the Upper East Side on Fifth Avenue
completely despise.
While Donald was the public face of his family,
away from the spotlight, Freddy's story, his older brother,
couldn't be more different.
Freddy had also married, had had children,
and for a time worked as a pilot in Florida.
He eventually lost his job as a pilot
and became a fishing boat captain,
then he worked on ships.
A downward spiral.
He fell into chronic alcoholism,
lost his job,
and ended up as part of the maintenance crew in the Trump buildings.
So while Donald was building Trump Tower and appearing on TV,
his older brother was a maintenance worker
at one of the Trump properties.
He finally drank himself to death.
I don't like to think too much about what happened to Fred.
Fred had problems with alcohol, people took advantage of him.
He didn't want to manage the business?
He didn't want to. You're absolutely right.
He didn't want to.
He shouldn't have done it, maybe it was my fault,
maybe it was my father's fault for pushing him into business,
because he wasn't good at it.
He didn't like business.
Did you also encourage him to get involved?
Yes.
After Freddy's death,
Donald appeared on several talk shows
talking about the power of genetics.
A life philosophy where humanity is divided into winners and losers.
There's a natural selection. Nature chooses you,
your DNA classifies you as a winner or a loser.
And Donald Trump sees himself
as the embodiment of the Trump family's winning gene.
Whereas his older brother, Freddy, was the opposite.
Trump Tower was inaugurated in 1983,
and Donald wasn't the only one with ambition in his DNA.
She wanted a role in the business, she wanted to participate.
She, we should remember, was a model, so she didn't go to the workplace
in overalls. She wore fashionable outfits
and high heels,
and she wanted to be involved
in every aspect of the business.
That wasn't what he had in mind.
I made a big mistake,
I involved Ivana a little in the business.
And she did a very good job,
she knew how to manage "The Castle",
then "The Plaza",
and she did a very good job.
But she would come home every night saying:
"This is how we're doing,
we're doing this and that."
And things changed, it was like
I had married a partner.
In a way, it seemed like
Donald had married
the wrong father.
He was looking for his mother,
someone to support him,
a homebody to take care
of the household chores.
But he ended up marrying his father,
he ended up marrying someone aggressive.
But Ivana was no longer
the only woman in his life.
Hidden on a yacht called
"Trump Princess",
was Marla Maples.
Another model, and over the course
of the next few years,
he moved her from one
sort of refuge to another,
and Ivana he moved from
one executive position to another.
But when he took them both
on the same ski trip,
Ivana and Marla met,
and not long after
Ivana asked for a divorce.
But Ivana had signed
a prenuptial agreement,
and this was no ordinary agreement.
The agreement she signed had been drafted
by none other than Roy Cohn.
One of Roy Cohn's drafts of the prenup stipulated
that Ivana had to return to Donald
all the gifts he had given her,
she defied the prenuptial agreement.
Donald Trump and his wife Ivana
have announced they are divorcing
after 12 years of marriage.
There are rumors of another woman involved.
This marital battle broke out where Donald and Ivana
were throwing poison
at each other through their lawyers and proxies,
blaming each other.
And you know, the media wanted more and more.
When this story broke
on the front pages of the press,
and in all the TV studios,
Fred was worried and Mary was distraught.
While their parents were mortified
by their marital problems,
Donald dealt with his problems
in his own way.
He bought 'Mar-a-Lago',
the legendary mansion in Florida.
He bought the sixth-largest yacht in the world,
bought an airline,
a football team.
Three casinos in Atlantic City, more
than anyone else had.
Did I mention the yacht?
It was an endless list.
Perhaps because she looked so much like Ivana,
he decided to settle down
with the much less intimidating Marla.
He knows how to reach your heart, he's loving,
and he's not afraid to say 'I love you',
or to hug you,
and I think that's very important.
She's a nice woman.
Donald and Marla had a daughter,
Tiffany,
and then they got married.
As Donald's life turned into a national soap opera,
he started to wonder
what he would do next with his fame.
You've said that if you ran
for president, you'd win.
I think there'd be a good chance, I mean, when I do something I like to win,
I like to do well,
and I think I'd have a great chance.
His marriage to Marla Maples
didn't last long.
This coincided
with his businesses being on the verge of bankruptcy.
His three casinos, the Castle, the Plaza,
and the Taj Mahal, went bankrupt,
and he declared bankruptcy.
Now things are getting complicated
for Donald Trump.
In 1999, Fred Trump, a prominent figure in Donald's life,
his main advisor,
his inspiration, dies.
Just a year later, Donald's mother
also passes away at 88.
But Donald bounces back, his businesses thrive,
and the family continues to grow.
In 2005, he married Melania,
his third wife.
She's another example
of a successful immigrant.
Melania, who grew up
in a housing project in Slovenia,
is now the First Lady.
she is now the first lady.
When you study the Trump family history, you start to see patterns.
An immigrant who ran bars and brothels during the Gold Rush.
A mother who came to the United States with nothing.
A father who built a real estate empire outside the law.
Success, lack of scruples, and morals.
And while Donald struts and boasts,
beneath the surface, reality is more fragile.
The Trumps believe in the supreme power of their genes.
Donald, however, was quick to focus attention
on himself and his family, especially his 9-month-old son Barron.
He is strong, smart, tough, ruthless, violent.
All the necessary ingredients to be a businessman.
And most importantly, let's hope he turns out smart.
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
Thank you.
I love this country.
Thank you, thank you very much.
...that I will faithfully execute...
...the office of President
of the United States...
...and will to the best of my ability...
...preserve, protect and defend...
...the Constitution
of the United States...
...so help me God.
Donald Trump will be the 45th President
of the United States.
Commander-in-Chief of the
United States Armed Forces.
The most powerful office in the world.
But who is Donald Trump?
What is he really like?
And what are his beliefs?
To find the answer,
we're going back to his beginnings.
To tell the story
of the Trump family.
From Donald's immigrant grandfather,
to his ambitious parents,
his stubborn brother, and his three wives.
Once you know the Trump family,
you'll have a better idea
of Donald's past,
and what this man
would be capable of...
MEET THE TRUMPS: IMMIGRANT TO PRESIDENLet me tell you a story.
The definitive story
of immigrant triumph,
the epitome of the American dream.
How Donald Trump's grandfather,
Friedrich Trump,
left Germany in the 1880s,
a poor barber, managed to make a small fortune in the United States.
And how his son, Fredrick Trump,
managed to amass an even bigger fortune.
And how his son, Donald, became
President of the United States.
This is a striking story,
filled with ups and downs,
courage and resilience,
it involves hotels, bars,
prostitution, and run-ins with the law.
And if you really want to understand
what motivates the President
of the United States,
and who he really is,
you have to hear this story.
Donald Trump's journey to
the White House begins with his grandfather.
Friedrich was the youngest son
in a family of vintners
who lived in Kallstadt,
a small town in Germany.
In 1885, due to the economic crisis
his family was facing,
Friedrich left home
in the middle of the night
and emigrated to the United States.
Friedrich was only 16 years old
when he arrived by ship in New York
hoping to make a fortune.
Friedrich arrived in the United States
with a suitcase, just one suitcase.
He didn't speak English.
He was very shrewd.
He started working as a barber
in downtown Manhattan.
New York was an extraordinary melting pot
of immigrants,
and Manhattan a crowded suburb.
Friedrich Trump worked there for several
years, saving every cent he earned,
but in the United States
of the 1890s,
the action was happening on the other side of the country.
He bought a train ticket
for $35
and headed for Seattle,
the Pacific Northwest coast.
When Friedrich Trump arrived in Seattle,
he came across saloons
full of card rooms,
people gambling, fighting,
construction everywhere.
And apparently he headed
for Washington Street, directly.
The most dangerous area
of a complex city.
People were practically
shot in the head
when they opened
the door to their apartment.
At just 23 years old, Friedrich Trump
hired two Italian chefs,
and dared to open a restaurant.
Exactly here
used to be the Dairy restaurant.
This was Fred Trump's restaurant.
This is it. Not much is left,
just cracks in the asphalt.
But in 1891, this was the first
successful Trump venture.
Why did he come here?
Because this place
was full of opportunities.
It wasn't about being locked
in an office counting cash,
because these were violent times.
Even Friedrich's
two Italian chefs
ended up fighting in his bar.
He could have lost everything.
He was gambling, who knows if he could handle a restaurant,
it was his first time running one.
He had big dreams and was trying to achieve them.
Friedrich was making money but not enough,
the real action was happening further north.
So he decided to change his destiny.
He proved he had a good eye for business,
and great initiative to get moving.
He's also aware that when the economy changes,
he needs to change too.
A little bird told him that John D. Rockefeller,
the richest man in America, was about to set up a mining operation
in a place called Monte Cristo, also in Washington state.
And off he goes.
It's an arduous journey into the mountains.
Friedrich's idea was to build his own building.
The first Trump Hotel.
The neighborhood where Trump had his hotel
was in the wrong part of town.
But it's a popular place, it's entertaining,
it's where men came on Saturday nights after a hard day
after working in the mines, in the forests,
and they wanted to spend their money, have a good time.
There are girls, there's food, gambling everywhere.
One of the men who worked there described it as hell's hole.
It definitely wasn't located in the refined part of town,
not in the business district.
Then in 1897, it came to light that miners had found gold
high up in the Canadian Rockies.
There were rumors that on the banks of the Klondike River
gold nuggets were being extracted directly from the earth.
And that's precisely where Grandpa Trump saw his next opportunity.
The winters in the Northwest are harsh.
Up in the mountains the snow is deep, avalanches sweep men away...
But Trump was a man who wasn't afraid of challenges.
Even though he was young and had no experience in the mountains.
So he packed all his provisions,
while the other men slept in the streets,
to join the bonanza and cash in.
And so it was.
Friedrich joined the miners on the brutal climb
up the infamous Dead Horse Trail.
Named because horses literally collapsed and died
along the side of the trail.
Then Grandpa Trump gets the idea to set up a tent restaurant.
He turns the dead horses into food.
He's now serving horse meat burgers.
Friedrich Trump was literally beating dead horses.
Trump is a man who seizes opportunities wherever he sees them.
Around May of 1898,
Friedrich Trump had run out of horses for his burgers,
so he built a two-story hotel in Bennett, a small town.
But just as he started operating, the miners were gone.
So what does he decide to do?
He takes the hotel building, slides it down the mountain,
puts it on a barge, and sets off for Whitehorse.
Unfortunately, he encounters Class 1 rapids
and the hotel disintegrates on the barge.
But he picks up the pieces of wood, rebuilds the hotel,
and puts it right in the heart of Whitehorse,
on a plot of land in an excellent area that doesn't even belong to him.
These are the last vestiges of the Old West in the United States.
Tough men and the complete absence of law enforcement.
And Friedrich Trump is not the type of man to go looking
for tiny bits of gold in icy waters.
He comes up with a better idea.
He decides to sell food and liquor to the local men,
and upstairs, he had "meretrices" that's what they were called.
Yes, Friedrich Trump was also a pimp.
There are three thousand miners
to the new hotel in the Arctic,
day after day,
and if they didn't have money to pay,
they could pay with gold or gold dust.
Grandpa Trump was amassing a great fortune.
But soon, with the liquor, the fights,
and the prostitution,
everything got out of control,
and the mounted police arrived in town,
and they started shutting down
the establishments.
He took it as a sign that he should leave.
Just as he had left Monte Cristo with a profit,
he left Whitehorse with some savings.
He knew when to leave,
he had a business plan in motion,
and then he left at the right time.
The theme that surrounds
the Trump family,
the one thing they could never
forget,
no matter how much money they made,
no matter how successful they were,
was conformity.
That relentless desire to keep going,
to find the next opportunity.
It's a very American story,
in that sense,
and a relentless story in turn.
But that's the story according to Trump.
While many struggle
for survival,
Friedrich Trump
is doing supremely well.
Now Trump's grandfather is heading
back to his hometown of Kallstadt, Germany.
But he can't imagine the amount of trouble
awaiting him.
KALLSTADGERMANY
This is the picturesque wine route
in Germany.
Beautiful vineyards
and gingerbread houses.
This is where it all began
for Donald Trump.
In 1901, Friedrich was back
in his native Germany,
hoping to find a wife
and start a new life.
But it wouldn't be that simple.
This relatively functional building
is the local state archive.
And within its walls
lies a document
that reveals a rather uncomfortable truth
about Donald Trump's grandfather.
about Donald Trump's grandfather.
- Okay.
- After you.
Friedrich had to reapply for German citizenship
since he had stayed in the United States for more than eight years.
This is the document.
What are we looking at?
Letters from the government
and the town council.
I see the Trump surname here. What does this letter say?
This is a letter written
by the mayor of Kallstadt.
The mayor is asking the
state commissioner of Durkheim
to grant Trump citizenship
again.
So the mayor
wants Trump back?
The mayor wants him back
because he's rich and reputable.
But they needed the consent
of the higher authorities?
From the Bavarian state, yes.
From the Bavarian state,
which he hasn't gotten yet.
Then let's talk about that.
In '85, he left without permission,
and without his military service certificate.
How interesting.
This is the key document
where the Bavarian state
informs Trump
that it will not grant him
Bavarian citizenship
because when he emigrated
to the United States in 1886,
he did so without permission,
and without having completed
his Bavarian military service.
Therefore, they are denying him
Bavarian citizenship.
Friedrich wrote several letters
to the Bavarian authorities,
begging them to allow him to stay
in Germany, all without success.
He received a deportation notice
from the crown prince of Bavaria.
So this is goodbye, then?
He didn't appeal after this?
No.
The course of history, ultimately,
depends on this document.
Because without this document,
there would be no Donald Trump,
the president
of the United States of America.
So Friedrich Trump
leaves Germany
with a deportation notice hanging over him.
But with a good amount of money.
The fortune he amassed when he lived here
during the Gold Rush.
So he did what the Trumps
always do,
he reinvented himself here in the United States.
He traveled with Elizabeth Christ,
his new wife.
A neighbor from Kallstadt
of humble origins.
Friedrich returned to his old profession
and opened a barber shop
on Wall Street.
I think Friedrich was waiting
for the right moment when he returned.
He lived practically in a tenement,
and offered his barber services
in the neighborhood.
And that's how he made a living.
And when he found an opportunity,
he went after it.
He went across the East River bridge
to a suburb called Queens
where Friedrich decided to dive
into the property business.
Queens was starting to take off,
but you wouldn't necessarily have imagined
that this was the place of the future.
But Friedrich was someone
who knew how to adopt a broad perspective.
Things were going well
for Friedrich.
The only exception I can think of
that has come to light in recent years
is that he drank too much,
and this problem reappears later
in the Trump family saga.
Prone to alcohol consumption or not,
Friedrich was a hard worker.
By 1918 his net worth
was half a million dollars
in today's money.
He and Elizabeth had 3 children,
including Fred, Donald's father.
Friedrich could have been very big
in Queens and in real estate,
but unfortunately for him
and his family
he died during the influenza epidemic
in 1918.
The entire Trump family
is buried in this cemetery.
The first was Friedrich Trump,
who died at 49,
leaving Elizabeth a widow
and their three children
to fend for themselves.
This also meant that his eldest son,
Fred Trump
had to take on
all the responsibility.
Fred Trump was a worthy son of his father,
at just 12 years old when his father died, he learned to draw blueprints,
he built garages for his neighbors,
and he was too young to have a bank account or a business in his name,
so his mother had to set up the company as Elizabeth Trump & Son.
The two began to explore land and build houses.
Fred, Donald's father, built his first house at just 17.
He would soon be solely in charge of the family business.
Of these three men, Friedrich, Fred, and Donald,
people used to say that it was really Fred, Donald's father,
the only intelligent one in the family.
Fred was only 24 years old
when he had to face his biggest business challenge.
The US economy collapsed.
Despair is the land they inherit and inhabit.
The darkest times represent great opportunities for the stealthy.
President Roosevelt announces his plan to save the economy.
This included government financing
to develop construction programs.
Fred Trump was the first to arrive at the New York regional office,
once the program was revealed.
And he started moving quickly
to build a large number of single-family homes,
and eventually apartments.
It's ironic
that the Trump business empire,
as it was forged in the 30s, was in many ways
a consequence of liberal policies.
And he was the first state capitalist, exploiting every dollar he could.
And all this through political connections.
This was the new frontier,
his father had been on the last physical frontier in the Northwest.
Fred was after the new frontier, meaning the federal government.
There was a real estate market in Brooklyn that went bankrupt.
And the courts decided who was awarded the mortgages,
and he used the right levers, the political levers in the courthouse, and took over all the properties.
And then he was able to use all those properties
to build his own housing and construction company.
So, he was basically a creature of the courthouse.
The rise of the Trump empire lies in that courthouse document.
Fred undoubtedly used his connections in high places,
but between 1935 and '42, he also built homes for over 2,000 families.
And now another immigrant enters the picture.
Mary Anne MacLeod.
A beautiful girl from the Isle of Lewis, part of the Hebrides.
A poor, bleak, remote, windswept place.
Donald Trump's mother grew up in a crofter's cottage
and Scottish Gaelic was her native tongue.
Tell us about the scene.
What was the Isle of Lewis like in the 1920s?
There was mass migration.
Mary MacLeod, later known as Mary Trump,
was born in 1912 in the village of Tong, on Lewis.
My grandparents were born in that village.
My mother too.
And they were part of that immigrant generation.
And Lewis, of course, like the rest of Britain and Europe,
had been hard hit by World War I.
Lewis had a particularly bitter experience.
Many men lost their lives.
The lure of migration, of a new world,
away from the poverty and tragedy
of the early 20th century in Europe,
was quite strong, and Mary was part of that movement.
What do we know about Mary MacLeod when she arrived in the US?
What's the first thing she does?
Mary got a permit to work as a domestic servant upstate New York.
Then she met Fred Trump, a handsome man, at a dance.
There was obviously an attraction and a reciprocity.
But they came from different social classes.
Sure, absolutely, and the transformation is impressive.
She goes from domestic servant to domestic goddess,
almost F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque.
It's like a story out of The Great Gatsby.
She was beautiful,
but also very self-assured, I think.
And I really think that shone through when she met Mr. Trump.
And her son has some of that too.
Absolutely.
Mary married Fred Trump in 1936.
She was brave, no doubt.
And I think her ambitions were in sync with Fred's ambitions.
And I think she felt she had made a good deal.
Fred built Mary a Tudor-style mock house in Queens,
the perfect place for their new family.
And while being a mother and wife,
she began to become part of the Trump empire.
She was one of those women who would go in her fur coat,
and in her Rolls-Royce to collect the coins
from the laundromats where people put their pennies to wash clothes,
in one of the apartment buildings.
But that was Mary.
This was her idea of what a wealthy American woman should do.
You go out in style and glamour, but you still go and collect the coins.
By 1938, Fred Trump had built an impressive real estate empire.
The Daily Eagle nicknamed him the "Henry Ford of housing."
Fred was gaining so much fame that he had to focus on his public image.
He wasn't someone who enjoyed the spotlight, particularly.
His daughter told me that Fred once took a Dale Carnegie course
on how to win friends and influence people,
because he was so shy that he hated being in front of the public.
But it wasn't long before Fred embraced the change.
This is him promoting the Trump brand around New York.
However, the Trump Empire would soon have its greatest businessman.
I know it's a bit chilly and there's some sun on the beach,
but imagine this place in July of 1939,
packed with sunbathers in sweltering heat,
and suddenly everyone hears this noise:
The US national anthem blaring from speakers.
The speakers floating on a barge, a big 60-foot boat,
right there, out at sea.
And as the barge moves, you hear the music,
and out of nowhere appear these giant letters,
20-foot-high letters spelling: T-R-U-M-P.
For the first time in the world, the Trump brand
is introduced in such a public way.
And it's Fred Trump trying to sell his new apartments,
just a few blocks from here, in Brooklyn.
This was the first display of Trump's showmanship.
It was just the beginning of a long story.
Soon the Trump empire would have its greatest businessman,
joining the Trump family in Queens.
So this is the Tudor-style imitation house.
It's the house where Fred and Mary Trump
lived towards the end of World War II.
And here, in 1946, Fred and Mary had their fourth child,
weighing a few pounds, Donald J. Trump enters the universe.
When Donald was 4 years old,
the Trumps decided to move
literally around the corner from where he was born.
Fred built an imitation colonial mansion.
The biggest house on the block.
But the Trump family still had a long journey ahead.
Fred, Donald Trump's father, amassed much of his fortune
after World War II ended.
When the soldiers returned home,
President Eisenhower announced a major financing program
for building homes for war veterans.
That was perfect for Fred.
He operated under the basis of large government financing,
and he took this money with both hands and was happy to do it.
Fred's scam was very simple,
he would ask the government for more money than he needed
to build the houses,
and basically kept the leftovers.
The key to this was knowing the rules,
the real rules,
not the rules
that the naive follow.
Fred needed important connections
for his scam,
including a regional official
named Tommy Grace.
And he hired George Grace.
Fred hired George Grace,
Tommy's brother
to be his lawyer.
So guess what?
The money just
landed in his hands.
Fred managed to build
thousands of new homes,
but he also amassed a huge fortune.
When President Eisenhower found out
what Trump was doing,
he was furious.
It was a national scandal.
The Senate Committee started investigating
and Fred was called to testify.
People are dragged
into these Senate hearings.
One of the men suffers a heart attack
after testifying.
Most of it is televised.
It's horrible.
Suddenly he was in all the news.
Four million dollars in government funds
were found
in Fred's bank account.
Which was not a good sign.
Fred Trump was called to testify
and said:
"I didn't break any laws
and isn't this what any business
in this country should do?
Make money."
In fact, he didn't break any laws,
he pushed it,
he bent it, he twisted it as much as he could,
but he didn't break it.
This is a guy smart enough to see the loopholes.
He knew how to identify where to exploit something
without breaking the law.
Somehow he manages
to get out of trouble
by declaring that the money was
simply there in his bank account.
The Senate hearings had
damaged Fred's reputation.
And at home there were also problems.
By this time, Fred and Mary had five children to deal with,
and one of them was starting to act out.
Donald, in essence, was a spoiled kid.
He was rough, violent with other children, disrespectful.
Always disrupting classes at his school.
He eventually crossed the line when he and a schoolmate
went to New York City, to Manhattan,
bought some switchblades,
and his father found the switchblade and said, "No more,
time for military school."
Also at New York Military Academy was Sandy McIntosh.
He had the chance to meet the young Donald.
I think he and his father
planned together, perhaps,
to create what they would call "the Donald brand."
When Donald's parents came to visit him on weekends,
they always brought him a different girl.
The girl was always well-dressed, in expensive outfits.
In fact, in my opinion, they looked like models.
Not a normal girl I could meet,
but a model, someone professional, somehow.
So every week it was a different girl.
For hanging out with these girls, he was labeled the playboy.
This was an all-boys military academy.
So being labeled a playboy was difficult
since girls weren't allowed there.
But Donald didn't win the award for most popular student.
I think some of the boys thought Trump looked down on them,
that he had a certain air of superiority.
But the problem I had with Donald,
was that, I think there was a kind of emptiness inside him.
If you don't have empathy, you would be, as Shakespeare would say,
someone destined for "stratagems and spoils."
There was a mantra that was passed down to the Trump boys
as they were growing up,
and this mantra came from his father,
who used to say: "You are killers, you are kings."
And by that he meant
they had to be ruthless,
prevail, rule.
The history of the Trumps is really
a succession from Friedrich,
from Friedrich to Fred,
down to Freddy, Fred's eldest son.
The plan was for Freddy
to become the natural heir,
and take over the entire real estate empire.
Freddy Trump was the family member
you would have loved to meet.
He was a brilliant, captivating,
funny guy.
He loved to have fun, he partied,
he liked to drink beer,
maybe two, six,
but he was the kind of person
you wanted to share with.
His father assigned Freddy a task.
He asked him to take charge
of one of the buildings.
And what did Freddy do?
He decided to change the windows to make the
place more pleasant for the tenants.
His father was horrified
by his son's indulgence,
and his lack of business sense.
And that confirmed to him
that Freddy didn't have what it took.
He wasn't good at it,
he didn't enjoy it,
and he didn't do a good job.
Freddy felt discouraged,
disheartened, depressed.
It wasn't what he wanted to do.
He left, he became a pilot,
which could be seen as an achievement,
but in the Trump household
it didn't seem to be.
With Freddy now a pilot,
Donald was next in line,
and he really wanted to take over
the billionaire empire.
I had a brother
who was a wonderful man,
he had an absolutely
brilliant personality.
He was handsome, wonderful,
people liked him, he was nice,
he trusted everyone.
He was truly a good human being
and people took advantage of that.
By the late 1960s,
Donald had finished his studies.
He graduated with a degree in economics
from the Wharton School of Business.
And with Fred's reputation in tatters
due to the Senate hearings,
it was very clear that Donald,
the blue-eyed young man,
he had to take over the company.
He will finally also prove
what I feel will be the most successful convention.
At 25, he was named president and as he spoke,
his father watched and took notes.
That's the first part of the financing.
Then Donald Trump would meet his closest advisor.
The most successful...
What's most striking about Donald's life
is that at 28, he meets Roy Cohn.
And anyone who knew Roy Cohn during that time
could only feel revulsion.
I knew Roy Cohn,
He was one of the most repulsive characters I've ever met in my life.
I felt like I was facing Satan.
Rude. And the word rude doesn't even begin to cover it.
A quarrelsome, cold man, a real son of a bitch,
would be how I think most people would describe him at that time.
This man was a reptile.
He used to eat with his hands,
he had toads all over his house in Greenwich Village.
He was an extremely eccentric man.
The godfathers of the 5 mafia families were represented by him.
And he was gay.
And he was the most anti-gay man you could find in New York.
Young Donald meets this man and says, 'He has to work for me.'
'He has to work for me.'
Donald Trump now has an advisor who is not part of his family,
although he is treated as if he were.
Roy Cohn was the second most influential person after Fred.
And I think it was a pretty close competition.
TRUMP VILLAGE WESCohn was assigned to defend them from the latest family scandal.
For years, the rumor circulated
that the Trumps were refusing to rent apartments here at Trump Village
to Black and Hispanic people.
And in the early 1970s,
the Justice Department in Washington really started investigating.
Elyse Goldweber, 27, was leading the investigation.
She was very inexperienced,
and didn't know much about the Trumps.
Except that they were wealthy,
very rich, a family in the real estate business.
They sent in what they called "test people",
undercover applicants with exactly the same credentials and references.
The only difference was the color of their skin.
What these tests showed
was that there were no apartments for Black people.
And that there were apartments available for white people.
I felt it was crystal clear that they had broken the law.
And in fact, we later found out
that if any minority: Black, Hispanic, etc., applied,
they would put the letter C on their application, C for "color."
Elyse's department filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization
for violating the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Roy Cohn claimed the Trumps were being persecuted by the government,
and filed a counterclaim for $100 million.
It was surprising.
A bit of that style of not backing down and fighting back,
that we see in Donald Trump now. Roy Cohn was the master of that.
And so the case went to court.
His father, he appeared to be a nice man,
he was very professional.
Even back then, Donald already liked to strut.
And with a somewhat dismissive attitude towards us.
When I took his deposition, regardless of whether you asked him a question or not,
he had trouble focusing, you had to explain it to him again.
And then, during the break, we'd have coffee and a snack,
and he would come up to me, you know, during the 10-minute break
and say, "Look, Elyse, you wouldn't want to live with them either."
I mean, I think that was a pretty chilling statement.
Malicious, repulsive.
Two years later, they reached an agreement,
and the Trumps had to show a list of all available rentals
to the Justice Department's Housing Center,
guaranteeing that racial prejudice would not continue.
And although many people describe it as a defeat,
in his signature style, he declared it a great victory.
And now he's free to set his next target: Manhattan.
Donald Trump is in his twenties,
but for him, even at that young age, that, over there, is the ultimate prize:
The Manhattan real estate market.
Fred, his father,
never moved the empire from this side of the East River to that side.
But Donald was convinced he wanted to conquer Manhattan,
the island where his grandfather had arrived so many years ago.
But it wouldn't be easy.
Donald always felt a certain aversion
towards New York's wealthy families.
They always looked down on him, but Donald didn't care.
I mean, he was the rebel within that circle.
Donald Trump, a tough man in a tough city.
Steve, you're going to have to start leaning on these people a bit,
because this is getting a little ridiculous, in my opinion.
While Donald made his plans in Manhattan, his father supported him.
But his father's advice went far beyond business.
It was a way of perceiving the world.
Fred always instilled this idea in his family.
I don't want to say a master race, but that there are certain...
more attractive people, and more successful, and that,
when they married, they created these super children.
And I think Donald really took that to heart.
And it's at this moment in our story
that another extraordinary character enters the picture.
You don't need to have a master's degree.
You can go to a hotel, be a maid,
a month later you get promoted and become head of housekeeping.
And a year later you can go after your current boss's job.
Because you have to, you have to climb,
and you have to try and you have to protect your family,
have self-confidence and leave the past behind.
Just focus on the future.
Ivana was sort of a female version of Donald.
She was the perfect match for him.
Mrs. Trump. Hello.
Excuse me.
I think they both shared that vision of the New York royal couple.
Donald felt a strong connection with Ivana.
He told his mother he had found the woman he wanted to marry.
I knew they were dating and they came over once, we had tea,
and that's where they announced they wanted to get married.
And obviously they had our blessing.
They had our blessing.
Ivana was a nice girl.
Donald and Ivana had three children:
Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.
I think for a while, Donald was the happiest he could be
in his home life.
They were a power couple,
and together they felt they could take over the world.
They both started the construction of Trump Tower.
This was what he intended to achieve
by building a gigantic building on Fifth Avenue,
and by putting his name in gold letters, gigantic letters, on the front door:
"TRUMP," here I am.
This was bold, cheap.
This is something that his neighbors on the Upper East Side on Fifth Avenue
completely despise.
While Donald was the public face of his family,
away from the spotlight, Freddy's story, his older brother,
couldn't be more different.
Freddy had also married, had had children,
and for a time worked as a pilot in Florida.
He eventually lost his job as a pilot
and became a fishing boat captain,
then he worked on ships.
A downward spiral.
He fell into chronic alcoholism,
lost his job,
and ended up as part of the maintenance crew in the Trump buildings.
So while Donald was building Trump Tower and appearing on TV,
his older brother was a maintenance worker
at one of the Trump properties.
He finally drank himself to death.
I don't like to think too much about what happened to Fred.
Fred had problems with alcohol, people took advantage of him.
He didn't want to manage the business?
He didn't want to. You're absolutely right.
He didn't want to.
He shouldn't have done it, maybe it was my fault,
maybe it was my father's fault for pushing him into business,
because he wasn't good at it.
He didn't like business.
Did you also encourage him to get involved?
Yes.
After Freddy's death,
Donald appeared on several talk shows
talking about the power of genetics.
A life philosophy where humanity is divided into winners and losers.
There's a natural selection. Nature chooses you,
your DNA classifies you as a winner or a loser.
And Donald Trump sees himself
as the embodiment of the Trump family's winning gene.
Whereas his older brother, Freddy, was the opposite.
Trump Tower was inaugurated in 1983,
and Donald wasn't the only one with ambition in his DNA.
She wanted a role in the business, she wanted to participate.
She, we should remember, was a model, so she didn't go to the workplace
in overalls. She wore fashionable outfits
and high heels,
and she wanted to be involved
in every aspect of the business.
That wasn't what he had in mind.
I made a big mistake,
I involved Ivana a little in the business.
And she did a very good job,
she knew how to manage "The Castle",
then "The Plaza",
and she did a very good job.
But she would come home every night saying:
"This is how we're doing,
we're doing this and that."
And things changed, it was like
I had married a partner.
In a way, it seemed like
Donald had married
the wrong father.
He was looking for his mother,
someone to support him,
a homebody to take care
of the household chores.
But he ended up marrying his father,
he ended up marrying someone aggressive.
But Ivana was no longer
the only woman in his life.
Hidden on a yacht called
"Trump Princess",
was Marla Maples.
Another model, and over the course
of the next few years,
he moved her from one
sort of refuge to another,
and Ivana he moved from
one executive position to another.
But when he took them both
on the same ski trip,
Ivana and Marla met,
and not long after
Ivana asked for a divorce.
But Ivana had signed
a prenuptial agreement,
and this was no ordinary agreement.
The agreement she signed had been drafted
by none other than Roy Cohn.
One of Roy Cohn's drafts of the prenup stipulated
that Ivana had to return to Donald
all the gifts he had given her,
she defied the prenuptial agreement.
Donald Trump and his wife Ivana
have announced they are divorcing
after 12 years of marriage.
There are rumors of another woman involved.
This marital battle broke out where Donald and Ivana
were throwing poison
at each other through their lawyers and proxies,
blaming each other.
And you know, the media wanted more and more.
When this story broke
on the front pages of the press,
and in all the TV studios,
Fred was worried and Mary was distraught.
While their parents were mortified
by their marital problems,
Donald dealt with his problems
in his own way.
He bought 'Mar-a-Lago',
the legendary mansion in Florida.
He bought the sixth-largest yacht in the world,
bought an airline,
a football team.
Three casinos in Atlantic City, more
than anyone else had.
Did I mention the yacht?
It was an endless list.
Perhaps because she looked so much like Ivana,
he decided to settle down
with the much less intimidating Marla.
He knows how to reach your heart, he's loving,
and he's not afraid to say 'I love you',
or to hug you,
and I think that's very important.
She's a nice woman.
Donald and Marla had a daughter,
Tiffany,
and then they got married.
As Donald's life turned into a national soap opera,
he started to wonder
what he would do next with his fame.
You've said that if you ran
for president, you'd win.
I think there'd be a good chance, I mean, when I do something I like to win,
I like to do well,
and I think I'd have a great chance.
His marriage to Marla Maples
didn't last long.
This coincided
with his businesses being on the verge of bankruptcy.
His three casinos, the Castle, the Plaza,
and the Taj Mahal, went bankrupt,
and he declared bankruptcy.
Now things are getting complicated
for Donald Trump.
In 1999, Fred Trump, a prominent figure in Donald's life,
his main advisor,
his inspiration, dies.
Just a year later, Donald's mother
also passes away at 88.
But Donald bounces back, his businesses thrive,
and the family continues to grow.
In 2005, he married Melania,
his third wife.
She's another example
of a successful immigrant.
Melania, who grew up
in a housing project in Slovenia,
is now the First Lady.
she is now the first lady.
When you study the Trump family history, you start to see patterns.
An immigrant who ran bars and brothels during the Gold Rush.
A mother who came to the United States with nothing.
A father who built a real estate empire outside the law.
Success, lack of scruples, and morals.
And while Donald struts and boasts,
beneath the surface, reality is more fragile.
The Trumps believe in the supreme power of their genes.
Donald, however, was quick to focus attention
on himself and his family, especially his 9-month-old son Barron.
He is strong, smart, tough, ruthless, violent.
All the necessary ingredients to be a businessman.
And most importantly, let's hope he turns out smart.
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
Thank you.
I love this country.
Thank you, thank you very much.