All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way

INTRODUCTION

DEARLY DEPARTED

I had no idea what we were in for.

June 29, 1999. On the day we buried my grandfather Fred Trump, whose name I carry and whose legacy I still bear, my son William Trump was just about to burst into the world. And I didn’t have a clue what a long, dark shadow that first family milestone was going to cast on the second one… or which of my relatives had been secretly plotting to leave one branch of the family out in the cold.

Mine.

My father’s father was the Trump who first defined what it meant to be a Trump, long before Uncle Donald marched the family name into Manhattan and gave it that shiny 1980s glow. It was sad for Grandpa to leave us, of course. But he was ninety-three and had been struggling with dementia for years. Six years earlier, when he was best man at Donald’s wedding to Marla Maples, my grandfather had almost gotten lost on his way to the altar and had to be reminded what he was doing there. “There wasn’t a wet eye in the place,” writer Julie Baumgold blurted to a New York Times reporter that awkward evening at the Plaza Hotel, after the “I do’s.” Just the kind of media snark we’d all been forced to get used to.

My grandfather had lived what could only be called a long and prosperous life. Having worked since he was a skinny ten-year-old, he’d risen to the very pinnacle of the New York real-estate world, ending up with a stunning portfolio that included scores of high-rise apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens. He had political juice from City Hall to Albany and was known everywhere he went, which is to say the outer boroughs of New York City, Grossinger’s in the Catskills, and the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. But he’d had a terrible relationship with my father, who blamed him for ruining his life. It was one of those can’t-live-together, can’t-live-apart situations. But it was my father, his namesake, who died just shy of his forty-third birthday with an ex-wife and two teenage children. So, you tell me: Who paid the ultimate price?

My grandfather wasn’t the easiest man to get along with. After all the tense holiday dinners I’d sat through at my grandparents’ twenty-three-room Colonial mansion in Queens, believe me, I knew. That was as plain as the three-piece suits, slicked-back hair, and Walter Cronkite mustache that became my grandfather’s fashion signatures. He was an old-style patriarch, presiding over a large, rambunctious family, whose members he managed to dominate and sometimes pit against each other. But business was his passion—that’s how he always defined himself, as a hard-driving businessman. In the office and at home, he had an emotional range that went all the way from stoic to judgmental to really pissed off. Not a lot of cuddling on the couch, and his later-in-life confusion didn’t add much humility to the mix. In his prime, he’d been an undeniably commanding figure and a very present grandfather. There was no doubt he’d amassed a stunning list of accomplishments in those nine-plus decades of his, along with a fortune worth at least a couple of hundred million dollars. And you can’t explain the personalities of any of his five children without knowing what he did for—and to—each of them.

Maryanne, the whip-smart but often cruel eldest child, whose public achievements as an attorney and federal judge were equally matched by her constant carping within the family.

My father, Fred Trump Jr., the charming black-sheep first son, whose free-spirited rejection of the family business was taken as a character flaw almost as severe as his self-destructive impulses and his alcoholism.

Elizabeth, the quiet middle child, who did everything she could to avoid the blinding glare of the Trump-family spotlight and almost succeeded.

Hard-charging Donald, the one most like their father, whose ferocious ambition and drive had to compensate for a lack of compassion, subtlety, and book smarts.

And finally, Robert, the chameleon little brother, who landed on one side or another of each fresh family drama, depending on who appeared to be ascendant that week.

No one can deny their many accomplishments. Grandpa built all those buildings and housed thousands of people, but he never achieved the intellectual stature that his daughter Maryanne did. He never became world-famous like his son Donald. He never sought that out. He certainly never hosted his own hit TV show or got himself elected president. But his towering presence launched all that and so much more, some of it worth being deeply proud of, some of it much better ignored. And that is the story of one generation of our family, all wrapped up in one paragraph.

I never planned to write a book. Up until now, I have stayed stubbornly quiet, even as those around me took their potshots. But silence is golden only when there is nothing that needs to be said. We are all in this family together, even when the “together” part isn’t close to where it ought to be. Well, it’s time for me to open up now, let some light shine in, and reflect on how we got this way so we can move past all that stuff. I have a name—Trump—that is extraordinarily polarizing, and keeps getting more so. But there is more to my name than all that friction, and I am ready to use it for something good. A cause near and dear to my heart: advocating for individuals with developmental disabilities. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

This nation and this family are inextricably intertwined. As go the Trumps, so goes America. For the sake of my generation and the generations to come, as well as the great nation we love, it’s time to advocate for policy over politics.

I realize the chapters ahead may ruffle some feathers. Things could be tense on the golf course the next time Uncle Donald rolls up in his cart. And I am certainly a flawed messenger. I have my faults—many of them. Who doesn’t in this family… or any other? The difference between me and my relatives is that none of them will admit that, and I just did. Thanks to some circumstances unique to my own life, I am a different kind of Trump.

So where did the cruelty come from? I’ve wrestled with that question for years. Who planted the seeds of narcissism? When did winning become everything? How did Trump loyalty become such a one-way street? Were all the outsized achievements in spite of these complicated relationships… or because of them? And what does all this mean for my generation of Trumps—David Desmond (Maryanne’s son from her first marriage), Donald Jr., Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany, Barron, my sister, Mary, and myself—and for our children and the generations that follow?

Excellent questions, and I will try to address all of them.

The cruelty, I can now see, didn’t come from any one of those distinct Trump personalities. As I will explain, it came from the unique way these strong-willed family members collided with each other and anyone who ever stood in their way. And a lot of it started with my grandfather.

Which brings me back to his send-off. He certainly deserved a proper one.

Six hundred and fifty people packed the pews at the Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue, a pulpit made famous by The Power of Positive Thinking author Norman Vincent Peale. Various Trumps had attended services there since the 1960s. It was quite a turnout that broiling June day. Relatives. Employees. Business associates. A who’s who of machers from the worlds of New York politics, media, construction, and real estate. The only thing missing… friends. Old and single-minded as he was, Grandpa didn’t have too many friends at the end.

My wife, Lisa, and I arrived at the church two minutes late. “What the fuck…,” my aunt Maryanne snapped at us as we slipped in the back and headed up to the family pew. I didn’t bother to answer. I just motioned toward Lisa’s belly. She was nine months pregnant, already out to here, but not wanting to miss such an important family gathering. My superwoman of a wife had willed herself there.

I’d been asked to deliver one of the eulogies, along with my grandfather’s four living children. Maybe I was a stand-in for my missing father.

Naturally, Donald spoke mostly about Donald. “I was having the greatest year of my business career,” he began, a heavily edited portrayal of his ever-changing fortunes. “I was sitting having breakfast thinking about how well things were going for me,” when he got the news that his father had died.

When it was my turn to speak, I got up there and looked out at all those people. It was the largest crowd I had ever addressed. I took a different path from the other eulogists. I didn’t even want to mention my grandfather’s wealth.

I accentuated the positive, saluting his potent influence on his family and his city. But I also wanted to touch on the hard history between my grandfather and his oldest son, which still hung so heavily over the family almost eighteen years after my father’s demise. “One of them was completely driven,” I said. “The other was a total free spirit. After all their clashes, maybe the two of them can find peace and comfort together in the afterlife.”

We could hope, right?

I caught Ivana’s eye just as I was saying that. After marrying twenty-two years earlier in this very same church, she and Donald had been divorced for eight and a half years by then. But she had been close to her father-in-law. Just as I got to “peace and comfort,” Ivana began to sob. Then, I spoke directly to my grandmother. I’d always had a special connection with her and she with me. Like my father and like me, she’d sometimes felt like an outsider in her own family. I wanted to bring some kind of encouragement to her.

“Gam,” I said, “don’t worry. Your fellows are going to be okay.”

I don’t know where I got that. I’m not even sure I fully believed it. But in a family not always known for its small kindnesses, it felt like the right thing to say.

On that sad day, I had every reason for optimism, though I didn’t choose to brag about it like some people had. My own real-estate career was hitting its stride—and not inside the protective womb (or the snake pit) of the Trump Organization, where Donald was now president, CEO, and twenty-four-hour-a-day publicity machine. I was beating a professional path all my own. Lisa and I had two happy, healthy children—five-year-old Andrea and three-year-old Cristopher—and a house we loved in Connecticut. We were delighted to know that our family would soon be welcoming another baby boy, the third child we had both been hoping for.

My precious son William was born the next morning. And without the tiniest heads-up, our whole world would suddenly be turned upside down.