All in the family: Trump's dad and grandfather

Richared Brenneman - Ol’ Friedrich Drumpf, the man who changed the name to the more palatable Trump, was a German draft dodger who fled to the U.S. and promptly entered the sex trade.

That’s just one of the revelations — including close ties to mafia figures — contained in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston’s new book, The Making of Donald Trump.

In this interview by Amy Goodman and Juan González of Democracy Now!, Johnston dishes the dirt on The Donald:

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in your book, you go into a story, not about his father, who’s been well known and covered previously by other publications, but about his grandfather. Talk about Donald Trump’s grandfather.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Donald Trump’s grandfather, Frederick, when he turned 16 in 1885, was subject to mandatory military service in Germany, so he fled the country and came to America. And then he followed Horace Greeley’s advice: “Go West, young man.” And he went into the whorehouse business. And he ran bordellos in Seattle, in Everett, Washington, and in the Yukon Territory, until the Royal Canadian Mounted Police showed up. He then took his fortune, went back to Germany, married a young woman his mother didn’t approve of, came back to America. His wife didn’t like it. They went back to Germany. He figured, with all his money, he could buy his way in. And they said, “You’re a draft dodger. Get out,” and sent him back to America.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, talk about his father, Fred Trump.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, Fred Trump, whose father died when he was 12 or 13 years old, was a very industrious guy. When he was 15 years old, he started a business—technically owned by his mother, because he couldn’t sign contracts—building garages in the outer boroughs of New York for these newfangled thing called automobiles. When the market collapsed because of the Great Depression, he invented one of the first grocery stores. People used to have clerks give them their canned goods and stuff. He opened one where you did your own, and then sold it for a profit.

He built housing during World War II for shipyard workers and is said to be the first person in line to get federal money to build worker housing. He was a profiteer. Dwight D. Eisenhower personally went into a rage over what he had done, how he’d ripped stuff off, and he had a creative explanation when he was called before the U.S. Senate to justify what he did. He said, “I didn’t profiteer. I didn’t take the money. It’s in the bank account.” Strange way to think about things. And, of course, they discriminated against everybody who wasn’t white, and were proven to have done this in the ‘50s and in the ‘70s. And Woody Guthrie, the folk singer, “This Land is Your Land,” he wrote a song, which is in the book thanks to the generosity of the Guthrie family, about one of the all-white outer suburb projects owned by Fred Trump.