The Trump Family Prequel

Hi everyone, welcome to Cold-Knowledge Blind Box. If you want to know who will have the greatest influence on the world over the next four years, it has to be Donald Trump, who has just been elected as the next president of the United States.

I once heard the best campaign line about him: at the very moment a bullet was about to hit his head, he seemed to hear God whispering. He turned his ear slightly, trying to find where the voice was coming from. The threads of fate tugged gently, and that deadly bullet just grazed past him. And then, at last, he heard God clearly say: this is a vote cast for you.

The man who lost four years ago has come back with a red wave that swept both houses of Congress. This time he will not only return to the White House in 2025, he has also won majorities in both the House and the Senate. That means that in the United States, where power is separated among three branches, Trump's wave has taken control of both legislative and executive power.

This episode, we'll indulge in a little gossip. We'll look at what kind of family Trump grew up in, how he went from a seemingly idle rich heir who would just inherit the family business, to a business tycoon who expanded the family's business empire sixtyfold, and finally to the peak of power, the presidency of the United States.

The story begins with Trump's grandfather. Friedrich Trump was born in 1869 in Kallstadt, Germany. For convenience, we'll call him "Grandpa Trump" from here on. Grandpa Trump's family was deeply in debt. To improve their lives, he was sent to learn barbering at the age of 14, but he soon realized the trade was already saturated in his small town.

To escape military service and look for better opportunities, Grandpa Trump emigrated to the United States in 1885 to join his older sister's family, who had already settled there. In America, he started his own little business, first running a barbershop. Business was just so-so. There was no great fortune, only enough to get by.

Then an opportunity came quickly. At that time, the big trend in the West was the gold rush. A huge influx of people brought plenty of demand. Grandpa Trump had some basic business instincts, so he decisively switched and went west to open restaurants and bars. Of course, these places also offered lodging and some entertainment. Through these businesses, Grandpa Trump quickly accumulated the family's first fortune, laying the foundation for the family's economic future.

By the time Trump's father, Fred Trump, took over the family business, it was the 1920s. The Trump family had a little money at that point, but not much. Fred understood the needs of city residents, from the working poor to the middle class, very well, and he founded a real estate development company that built low-income housing. Not long after, the Great Depression hit, and industries withered across the country. At the time, Brooklyn and Queens in New York were not as developed as they are today, and many city workers and bankrupt white-collar employees were still living there.

Seeing this, Fred immediately invested in building large numbers of affordable housing. This did several things at once: it kept him on good terms with the government, allowed him to receive government subsidies, and gave him a charitable image in front of ordinary people. It was a total win. The Trump family quickly became a well-known real estate developer in the area. By the 1960s, his company had built more than 27,000 low-income apartments and row houses.

Despite his success, Fred's company was once investigated on suspicion of exploiting Federal Housing Administration policies for gain. In addition, he was accused of racial discrimination in his rental business, which made him unpopular in some communities. This also laid the groundwork for the trials Trump would later face.

Through a series of bold investments, Fred managed to hold on to the family's fortune, and he accumulated a considerable amount of family wealth and connections in New York. But this was still only a modestly wealthy family. Compared with a nationally famous family with a proud American pedigree, such as the Kennedys, the Fords or the Rockefellers, it was simply not in the same league.

By 1946, the Trump of our era was born. He was the fourth child in the family, with an older brother, two older sisters, and a younger brother. With so many siblings, and in a fairly wealthy family, surely there was going to be a family-inheritance drama?

Right, Fred especially favored Trump's eldest brother, Fred Trump Jr. You can tell from the name alone how much their father loved his eldest son. The two shared the same name, with only a "Jr." added. Fred was hoping the family business would eventually be passed on to his eldest son.

As for Trump, his father didn't have high expectations. Perhaps it was this family environment that set these two Trumps on very different paths in life.

In the next episode of Cold-Knowledge Blind Box, we'll continue to reveal how Trump step by step expanded the Trump family's business empire, grew into a business giant of his generation, and how, through a series of fortunate coincidences, he came to hold enormous power and win the presidency of the United States.

We'll pick up the story of the Trump family's rise in the next episode of Cold-Knowledge Blind Box. If you have any other cold knowledge you'd like to hear, you can also open the NIO app, go to the Friends tab and the community section, find NIO Radio's Shenzhen City Station, and share the cold knowledge you like with us!

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