The Making of Donald Trump Read Online Free
fact that he acted as his own general contractor. That fit with his reputation as a builder who got things done and ahead of schedule, though the schedules often had lots of slack built in, making an early finish easy. Fred then did hisbest to turn the tables, attacking the investigators for, he said, doing “untold damage to my standing and reputation.” There was talk of perjury indictments, but nothing ever came of the FHA investigation.
A month after Fred Trump’s testimony in Washington, merchants in the Fort Greene area of Brooklyn complained that Trump, backed by federal slum-clearance money to take over their neighborhood, had gouged them on rent. Storekeepers told the
Brooklyn Eagle
that he was doubling rents, which was “immoral.”
Adopting the same stance he had on Capitol Hill, Fred Trump said it was all just a misunderstanding. The merchants had been paying vastly different rents for similar properties—$40 a month for one storefront, $200 for another—which Fred Trump said made no sense. He also said that he expected the merchants to be out within a couple of years so he could build a new apartment project using the slum-clearance powers the government had enacted … and from which he would soon profit.
Taxpayers were not the only source of capital for Fred Trump’s construction projects. A few years after the war ended, he took on a partner known as Willie Tomasello. When cash was short, Tomasello was able to provide Trump with operating capital on short notice. Tomasello also saw to it that there was no trouble from the unions, from the bricklayers and carpenters to the teamsters.
The New York State Organized Crime Task Force identified Tomasello as an associate of the Genovese and Gambino Mafia families in New York. In other words, just as Friedrich Trump had engaged in illicit businesses to build his fortune in the late nineteeth century, his son Fred Trump turned to an organized crime associate as his longtime partner to build hisown. Decades later, Donald Trump would also do business with the heads of the same families, though at a remove, developing numerous business connections with an assortment of criminals, from con artists and a major drug trafficker to the heads of the two largest Mafia families in New York City, as we shall see.
It should be no surprise that Donald Trump took after his father.Fred Christ Trump was a stern father who expected his sons to learn the family business. He had his oldest son, Fred Jr., and the younger boys, Donald and then Robert, learn the business from the ground up, actually driving them regularly to his properties in his blue Cadillac. (He bought a new one every two years. It had what at the time was a novelty, a customized license plate reading “FCT”.) The boys were assigned to sweep out storage rooms, empty coins from the basement washers and dryers, make minor repairs under the supervision of maintenance crews, and, as they got a little older, collect rents.
It was not that the boys needed the little bit of money Dad gave them for their labors. When Donald was still in diapers, he and his siblings had a trust fund. His share was about $12,000 a year, which in the late nineteen forties was roughly four times the typical income for a married couple with children if the husband held a full-time job.
Fred worked out of an austere Avenue Z office in Brooklyn, assisted by a secretary who stayed with him for more than a half century. (He told others it was best to hire an overweight and unattractive secretary because she would stay on the job.)
I’ve talked with people who sat across from Fred’s plain desk, proposing to do plumbing, window, and electrical work. They describe a ritual that was certainly not unique to that office. First, a plain envelope would be presented. Fred would take a second to test its weight in his hand before putting itinto a drawer. Then he would listen to the pitch about contract terms for work on his buildings.
The
A month after Fred Trump’s testimony in Washington, merchants in the Fort Greene area of Brooklyn complained that Trump, backed by federal slum-clearance money to take over their neighborhood, had gouged them on rent. Storekeepers told the
Brooklyn Eagle
that he was doubling rents, which was “immoral.”
Adopting the same stance he had on Capitol Hill, Fred Trump said it was all just a misunderstanding. The merchants had been paying vastly different rents for similar properties—$40 a month for one storefront, $200 for another—which Fred Trump said made no sense. He also said that he expected the merchants to be out within a couple of years so he could build a new apartment project using the slum-clearance powers the government had enacted … and from which he would soon profit.
Taxpayers were not the only source of capital for Fred Trump’s construction projects. A few years after the war ended, he took on a partner known as Willie Tomasello. When cash was short, Tomasello was able to provide Trump with operating capital on short notice. Tomasello also saw to it that there was no trouble from the unions, from the bricklayers and carpenters to the teamsters.
The New York State Organized Crime Task Force identified Tomasello as an associate of the Genovese and Gambino Mafia families in New York. In other words, just as Friedrich Trump had engaged in illicit businesses to build his fortune in the late nineteeth century, his son Fred Trump turned to an organized crime associate as his longtime partner to build hisown. Decades later, Donald Trump would also do business with the heads of the same families, though at a remove, developing numerous business connections with an assortment of criminals, from con artists and a major drug trafficker to the heads of the two largest Mafia families in New York City, as we shall see.
It should be no surprise that Donald Trump took after his father.Fred Christ Trump was a stern father who expected his sons to learn the family business. He had his oldest son, Fred Jr., and the younger boys, Donald and then Robert, learn the business from the ground up, actually driving them regularly to his properties in his blue Cadillac. (He bought a new one every two years. It had what at the time was a novelty, a customized license plate reading “FCT”.) The boys were assigned to sweep out storage rooms, empty coins from the basement washers and dryers, make minor repairs under the supervision of maintenance crews, and, as they got a little older, collect rents.
It was not that the boys needed the little bit of money Dad gave them for their labors. When Donald was still in diapers, he and his siblings had a trust fund. His share was about $12,000 a year, which in the late nineteen forties was roughly four times the typical income for a married couple with children if the husband held a full-time job.
Fred worked out of an austere Avenue Z office in Brooklyn, assisted by a secretary who stayed with him for more than a half century. (He told others it was best to hire an overweight and unattractive secretary because she would stay on the job.)
I’ve talked with people who sat across from Fred’s plain desk, proposing to do plumbing, window, and electrical work. They describe a ritual that was certainly not unique to that office. First, a plain envelope would be presented. Fred would take a second to test its weight in his hand before putting itinto a drawer. Then he would listen to the pitch about contract terms for work on his buildings.
The
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