The 10 Craziest Facts From BBC’s ‘Meet The Trumps’

Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump, whose name was later changed to Frederick, emigrated to America from Bavaria (now Germany) when he was 16. There he started his life working as a barber, but after a period of time he moved to the Northwest to take advantage of the booming gold industry. It was the 1890s, after all. After a series of failed ventures, Trump finally found a cheap product people were willing to buy — horse burgers. Trump would take the fallen horses from the aptly-named Dead Horse Trail and sell the product back to miners.

Get ready for a lot of information about Friedrich because he was quite an interesting character. At one point, the Trump patriarch ran out of horse meat to feed his customers, so Friedrich built a hotel instead. However, that prospect didn’t last long either. The miners quickly ran out of work and started to search down the river for another job, which left Trump in a difficult situation. He had a rooms to rent but all of his customers were leaving him at once. So Friedrich did what any rational businessman would do — he loaded his hotel on a barge and attempted to ford it down the river to a new location. The most insane part about this story is that it worked. The building only fell apart once, but Trump was able to take the remains of his hotel and rebuild once he found a suitable piece of land (that he did not own).

Meet the Trumps describes the second iteration Friedrich’s hotel as a place that was on the wrong side of the tracks. But that didn’t mean the place wasn’t popular. The hotel became a well-known spot, largely because of its ladies of the night. A biographer once even called the place “a hotbed of sex, booze, and money, [it] was the indisputable center of the action in Seattle.”

After his success in the West, Trump decided to move back to his old home of Kallstadt, Germany. Because he had been in America for eight years at that point, he had to reapply for citizenship, and that’s when his plans hit a bump. Trump had left for America without his government’s consent and without completing his Bavarian military service. The mayor of Kallstadt actually petitioned on Trump’s behalf for him to stay, but the request was denied. He was instead deported back to America.

After the end of World War II, President Eisenhower unveiled a housing plan that would give major breaks to builders who built homes for veterans, and you can bet the Trumps were all over this deal. Fred Trump Sr. asked for more money than he needed and pocketed the difference. When Eisenhower learned about the scam, Trump was forced to appear before the Senate. One of men who testified even had a heart attack after his testimony, just to add to the crazy. The documentary also notes how there’s a degree of irony that a large part of the Trump fortune was made off of liberal policies, both between this deal and the post-Depression Roosevelt deal.

Not only that, but Trump’s mother is described as being notably frugal and money conscious. According to Meet the Trumps, she would often go out in her expensive coats but would check building washing machines in search of forgotten change. This likely was due in part to her poor childhood. This fact is less insane and more interesting.

At least that’s not the way this doc tells it. The adjectives the documentary uses are rough, violent, and disrespectful, largely because Donald Trump was always disrupting class. However the final straw came when Donald and a friend went to New York City to buy switchblades without telling anyone. After finding the knife, Fred Sr. sent his son to military school.

This advice came from the boys’ father, Fred Trump. It’s hardly the first time this information has been reported or shared, but considering who our president currently is, it’s still jarring.

What’s interesting about this next segment isn’t really the information itself but the documentary’s handling of it. Donald Trump is obviously a divisive subject, but Meet the Trumps does a good job of presenting even the most scandalous Trump stories as even-leveled human interest stories. That tone changes the second Roy Cohn is mentioned. Cohn, who was a close friend of Trump’s, is compared to Satan, called a “SOB,” and is described as “reptilian.” He’s also named as the second most influential person in Trump’s life. Cohen eventually acted as Trump’s lawyer when Trump was accused of being racially biased toward his tenants in a major lawsuit.

The story of Trump’s brother is a sad one. After disappointing his father as a business apprentice, Fred later became a pilot and then a boat captain. However, it was his progressive alcoholism that eventually took his life. The documentary argues that Trump sees his brother’s death in comparison to his own success as proof that he was “winning” sibling. Of course, unless Donald Trump confirms this, there’s no way of knowing if this is the case. However, Donald Trump did partially blame himself and his father for Fred Jr.’s death in a televised interview.

Stream Meet the Trumps: From Immigrant to President on Netflix