Friday, October 5, 2018

Daddy’s boy: New York Times investigation exposes the breadth of Trump’s lies and corruption

https://www.salon.com/2018/10/03/daddys-boy-new-york-times-investigation-exposes-the-breadth-of-trumps-lies-and-corruption/
"Part of the Donald Trump myth has always been the idea that he was much more successful than his father. That too is BS. Fred Trump was massively rich, and his wealth is what supported Trump throughout his career. The Times procured hundreds of thousands of confidential documents, including 200 tax returns from Fred Trump's business that show many years of shady business practices designed to hide all these transactions -- which add up to Donald Trump receiving at least $413 million in today's dollars. Trump has always said he got "peanuts” from his father. That's a lot of peanuts. And they started rolling in when he was a tiny boy. The Times found that even as a toddler, he was earning the equivalent of $200,000 a year in contemporary dollars. He and was a millionaire by the time he was eight years old. Year after year he received more money from his father's various trusts, until he was getting $5 million a year all the way into his 50s. It's always been unclear how Trump could maintain his luxurious lifestyle even when his businesses were all cratering in the '80s and '90s. Now we know. Fred Trump took very good care of his boy even after he found out that Donnie was fiddling with the will without telling anyone and had his daughter Maryanne (now a federal judge) find someone to draw up papers stripping his son of sole control over Fred’s estate."