Fred Trump

Frederick Christ Trump Sr. (October 11, 1905 – June 25, 1999) was an American real-estate developer and businessman. He was the father of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.

Born in the Bronx to German immigrant parents, Trump began working in home construction and sales in the 1920s before heading the real-estate business started by his parents (later known as the Trump Organization). His company rose to success, building and managing single-family houses in Queens, apartments for war workers on the East Coast during World War II, and more than 27,000 apartments in New York City overall. Trump was investigated for profiteering by a U.S. Senate committee in 1954 and again by New York State in 1966. Donald Trump became the president of his father's real-estate business in 1971. Two years later, they were sued by the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division for apparent racial discrimination against black people.

Contradicting Donald Trump's claim that he built a multibillion-dollar company using "a small loan of a million dollars" from his father, in 2018 The New York Times reported that Fred and his wife, Mary Trump, provided over $1 billion (in 2018 currency) to their children overall, avoiding over $500 million in gift taxes. In 1992 Fred and Donald set up a subsidiary which was evidently used to funnel Fred's finances to his surviving children; shortly before his death, Fred transferred the ownership of most of his apartment buildings to his children, who several years later sold them for over 16 times their previously declared worth.

In 1927, Trump was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan parade; there is no conclusive evidence that he supported the organization. From World War II onwards, to avoid associations with Nazism, Trump denied his German ancestry and also supported Jewish causes.