In a bombshell report, the New York Times has destroyed Trump's claim that he was a self-made, up-by-your-bootstraps entrepreneur who benefited little from his father’s fortune.
According to hundreds of confidential tax returns and financial records, Trump received over $400 million (in today’s dollars) from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing today. And, to bail out his failing businesses, Trump borrowed tens of millions of dollars from his dad-- who was one of the richest people in America in the 1970s.
Trump's father used a series of elaborate tax avoidance schemes that had baby Trump earning $200,000 a year by the age of three. On paper, Trump Jr. was a millionaire by age 8.
Trump has also claimed that his father had “never sheltered” him and that he’d had to figure his own way out of challenging situations. Trump’s father repeatedly helped rescue him from financial ruin, loaning him millions of dollars and pumping millions more into his failing businesses.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as several of Trump’s business ventures, including his Atlantic City casinos and the Plaza Hotel, were hurtling toward bankruptcy, four entities that Fred Trump had created paid his son the equivalent of $8.3 million in today’s dollars.
Trump’s dad also infamously sent one of his bookkeepers to Atlantic City in 1990 to buy $3.5 million in casino chips to help his son make a bond payment.
The ruse was discovered and the casino had to pay a fine ― but thanks to his father, Trump “narrowly avoided defaulting on his bonds,” the Times wrote.
Fred Trump wasn’t always able to get his son out of financial trouble, however. Despite the financial “safety net” he attempted to provide, Trump has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy for his companies six times.
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