Donald Trump Recordings

Bavarian immigrant Friedrich Trump came to America at the age of sixteen and began working as a barber. Sensing an opportunity in the Yukon Gold Rush, he moved to the Northwest, but rather than toiling in the frigid goldfields, Friedrich opened a series of restaurants and built a considerable fortune. He returned to Bavaria in 1901 where he married Elisabeth Christ.

The Trumps were relatively well off and intended to stay in Bavaria but chose to move to America rather than have Friedrich be drafted into the Bavarian Army. Upon returning to New York, Friedrich returned to barbering but also worked as a hotel and restaurant manager. His daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1904, his son Fred in 1905, and John in 1907. Friedrich opened a barbershop at 60 Wall St in Manhattan and began investing in property and hotels in Brooklyn and Queens.

Sadly, the Trumps lost Papa Friedrich to the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. Mama Elizabeth continued to manage his real estate interests and young Fred developed an interest in building things.  While working as a butcher's delivery boy, Fred began attending night school to study carpentry and blueprint reading, as well as taking correspondence courses in other building trades.

Doing business as "E. Trump & Son", Mama Elizabeth loaned Fred $800 in 1923 to build a house in Queens, which was completed and sold the next year. In 1926, the company built twenty new homes in the area, some of them sold before completion to finance the rest. Fred built New York City's first modern supermarket in 1933 and in 1936 he married Mary Anne MacLeod.

Fred and Mary had five children; Maryanne born in 1937, Fred Jr. born in 1938, Elizabeth born in 1942, Donald born in 1946, and Robert born in 1948. After an arrest for being involved with some rowdies on Memorial Day 1927, Fred was a teetotaler and became an authoritarian parent. Each evening, Mama Mary Anne would report the children's activities and Fred Sr. would hand out discipline as he saw fit.

During the War, Fred increased the family fortune by building barracks and apartments around Naval bases up and down the East Coast, and when victory came he invested heavily in housing for middle-income returning veterans. Although he was the "second son", Fred Sr. began grooming Donald to become his business heir. All the Trump boys did odd jobs and had paper routes, and when the weather was too bad for them to be out he allowed them to use the family limousine to deliver their papers.

Donald was thirteen when he was enrolled in the New York Military Academy. He transferred to Fordham University in 1964. He transferred to the Wharton School of Business in 1966. While attending school, Donald received a student deferment from the military draft but was deemed eligible for service upon graduation in 1968. That autumn, he was reclassified as 1-Y, medically unqualified except in case of a national emergency, and further reclassified as 4-F in 1972.

While studying at Wharton and after graduating, Donald went to work with his father at Trump Management. The younger Trump attracted national attention in 1978 when he began the renovation of the Commodore Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The hotel reopened as the Grand Hyatt in 1980, and the same year Trump announced plans for Trump Tower, also in Midtown. Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino opened in Atlantic City in 1984. The Trump Castle Casino opened in 1985 and he acquired the Trump Taj Mahal in 1988.

Donald Trump is credited with authoring 19 books on business and financial matters, the biggest success was The Art of the Deal (1987, Random House) which topped The New York Times Best Seller list for 13 weeks. The book helped to make Trump a "household name" and its success led producer Mark Burnett to work with Trump to develop The Apprentice reality-television series. The popular show ran for 15 seasons beginning in 2004.

Before running for the Presidency, Donald Trump had never worked in public service or the military. Politically, he has had several different Party affiliations. He registered as a Republican in Manhattan in 1987, changed to the Reform Party in 1999, became a Democrat in 2001, and settled back with the GOP since 2009. An exploratory committee was formed in 1999 to raise the possibility of Trump running on the Reform Party ticket in 2000 against George W. Bush and Al Gore, but Trump dropped out of the race in February 2000.

Trump became more politically active just before the 2012 race, and there was speculation that he would run against incumbent President Obama. In May 2011 Trump announced that he would not run, however, when Obama lampooned Trump's possible Presidential ambitions at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, Trump seems to have hardened his resolve to eventually run.

On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump officially announced his candidacy for President of the United States. The campaign was not taken seriously in the early months of the Primary season, but on Super Tuesday, March 1, Trump won more delegates than the other GOP candidates and never lost his lead. He ran on a platform of getting tough on Chinese Trade Negotiations, enforcing Immigration laws, building a wall on the Mexican Border, and pursuing energy independence while opposing climate change regulations.

Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held the lead in the polls throughout the general election cycle. The candidates met for three debates, and polling indicated that Clinton had won each of them. However, Trump's base supporters appreciated their candidate's refusal to speak with "political correctness" and supported his reputation as a Washington outsider. The election was held on November 8, 2016, and although Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote 48.18% to 46.09%, Trump's victory in key swing states gave him 304 electoral votes to Clinton's 227.

Several protests took place around Inauguration Day, but on January 20, 2017, when Donald Trump became the first person sworn into the Presidency without military or government experience.  At 70, he was also the oldest person to have assumed the Office. 

See also: DC Riot 2021 and Impeachment of Donald Trump.

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