When she finally did, Fred said, “Do whatever you want to do.”
She explained how very, very sorry she was to disappoint them.
“Maryanne, I couldn’t care less. You’re going to be his wife.”
Gam didn’t say anything at all, and that was that.
David liked to tell Maryanne that his name would be known far beyond the reach of the Trumps. Although well educated, he didn’t have any obvious skills to back up his ambition. Even so, he remained convinced that he’d find a way to succeed beyond his dreams and “show them.” Like Ralph Kramden without the charm, kindness, or steady job with benefits, his “next big thing,” just like the car dealership, always failed or never materialized at all. It wasn’t long into the marriage before David started drinking.
The Desmonds lived rent free in a Trump apartment and enjoyed the same medical insurance everyone in the family received through Trump Management, but free rent and medical insurance didn’t put food on the table, and they had no income.
The biggest mystery, however, was why Maryanne was so financially dependent on her incompetent husband, just as it was a mystery that Elizabeth lived in a gloomy one-bedroom apartment next to the 59th Street Bridge and Freddy couldn’t buy a house and his planes, boats, and luxury cars kept disappearing. My grandfather and great-grandmother had set up trust funds for all of Fred’s children in the 1940s. Whether or not Maryanne was entitled to the principal yet, the trusts must have generated interest. But the three oldest children had been trained not to ask for anything ever, and if my grandfather was the trustee of those trusts, they were trapped in their financial circumstances. Asking for help meant you were weak or greedy or seeking advantage over someone who needed nothing from you in return, although an exception was made for Donald. It was so frowned upon that Maryanne, Freddy, and Elizabeth, in different ways, all suffered from totally avoidable deprivation.
After a few years of her husband’s continued unemployment, Maryanne was at the end of her rope. She approached her mother, but in a way that didn’t arouse suspicion. “Mom, I need some change for the laundry,” she would say casually whenever she went to the House. She thought nobody knew how bad it was. For Fred, once his daughter was married, she wasn’t his concern, but my grandmother knew. She didn’t ask questions, either because she didn’t want to pry or because she wanted Maryanne to have her “pride,” and handed her daughter a Crisco can filled with dimes and quarters that came from the washers and dryers that she’d retrieved from my grandfather’s buildings. Every few days, Gam made the rounds in Brooklyn and Queens, driving her pink Cadillac convertible and wearing her fox fur stole to collect the coins. As my aunt would later concede, in a family of already tremendous wealth, those Crisco cans saved her life; without them she wouldn’t have been able to feed herself or her son, David, Jr.
At the very least, Maryanne should have been able to buy groceries without having to ask my grandmother, no matter how obliquely. But no matter how dire their situation, the three oldest Trump children couldn’t get anybody in their family to help them in any substantive way. After a while there seemed to be no point in trying at all. Elizabeth simply accepted her lot. Dad eventually came to believe it was what he deserved. Maryanne convinced herself that not asking for or receiving help was a badge of honor. Their fear of my grandfather was so deeply ingrained that they no longer even recognized it for what it was.
The situation with David Desmond eventually became untenable. He couldn’t get a job, and his drinking worsened. Desperate but being very careful not to seem as if she were asking for anything, Maryanne hinted to her father that David would love a place at Trump Management. My grandfather didn’t ask if there was a problem. He gave his son-in-law a job as a parking lot attendant at one of his buildings in Jamaica Estates.
* * *
Donald graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in the spring of 1968 and went straight to work at Trump Management. From his first day on the job, my twenty-two-year-old uncle was given more respect and perks and paid more money than my father ever had been.
Almost immediately, my grandfather appointed Donald vice president of several companies that fell under the Trump Management umbrella, named him “manager” of a building he didn’t actually have to manage, gave him “consulting” fees, and “hired” him as a banker.
The reasoning for that was twofold: First, it was an easy way to put Freddy in his place while signaling to the other employees that they were expected to defer to Donald. Second, it helped consolidate Donald’s de facto position as heir apparent.
Donald secured his father’s attention in a way nobody else did. None of Freddy’s friends could understand why Donald was, in Fred’s eyes, “the cat’s meow.” But after the summers and weekends Donald spent working for his father and visiting construction sites, Fred exposed his younger son to the ins and outs of the real estate business. Donald discovered he had a taste for the seamier side of dealing with contractors and navigating the political and financial power structures that undergirded the world of New York City real estate. Father and son could discuss the business and local politics and gossip endlessly even if the rest of us in the cheap seats had no idea what they were talking about. Not only did Fred and Donald share traits and dislikes, they had the ease of equals, something Freddy could never achieve with his father. Freddy had a wider view of the world than his brother or father did. Unlike Donald, he had belonged to organizations and groups in college that had exposed him to other people’s points of view. In the National Guard and as a pilot at TWA, he had seen the best and brightest, career professionals who believed there was a greater good, that there were things more important than money, such as expertise, dedication, loyalty. They understood that life wasn’t a zero-sum game. But that was part of my dad’s problem. Donald was as narrow and provincial and egotistical as their father. But he also had a confidence and brazenness that Fred envied and his older brother lacked, qualities that Fred planned to turn to his advantage.
* * *
Donald’s bid to replace my father at Trump Management was off to a strong start, but he was still at loose ends at home. Robert was at Boston University, which enabled him to avoid service in Vietnam, and Donald and Elizabeth didn’t socialize with each other. Freddy did his best to include his little brother in whatever he and his friends got up to, but it rarely went well. They were a laid-back group who loved flying out east with Freddy to fish and water-ski. They found Donald’s lack of humor and self-importance off-putting. Though they tried for Freddy’s sake to welcome his little brother, they didn’t like him.
Toward the end of Donald’s first year at Trump Management, the tension between him and Freddy was becoming noticeable. Though Freddy tried to leave it at the office, Donald never let anything go. Despite that, when Billy Drake’s girlfriend, Annamaria, was having a dinner party, Freddy asked if he could invite his brother.
The evening didn’t go much better than Donald’s attempted flirtation in the driveway years earlier. Shortly after the brothers arrived, raised voices drew Annamaria from the kitchen, where she was preparing dinner. She found Donald standing inches away from his brother, flushed and pointing his finger in Freddy’s face. Donald looked as though he were about to hit Freddy, so Annamaria pushed herself between the two very tall men.
Freddy took a step back and said through clenched teeth, “Donald, get out of here.”
Donald seemed stunned, then stormed away, saying, “Fine! You eat the girl’s roast beef!” as he slammed the door on his way out.
“Idiot!” Annamaria called after him. She turned back to Freddy and asked, “What was that about?”
Shaken, Freddy simply said, “Work stuff.” And they left it at that.
* * *
Things weren’t getting any better at the Highlander, either. Despite my mother’s fear of snakes, Dad brought home a ball python one day and put the tank into the den, forcing my mother to pass by it any time she needed to do laundry, go i
nto my brother’s room, or leave the apartment. Their fights escalated after that gratuitous bit of cruelty, and by 1970 my mother had had all she could take. She asked Dad to leave. When he came back unannounced a couple of weeks later and let himself in, she called my grandfather and insisted that the locks be changed. For once, Fred didn’t object; he didn’t ask any questions, and he didn’t blame her. He simply told her that he would take care of it, and he did.
Dad never lived with us again.
* * *
My mother called Matthew Tosti, one of my grandfather’s attorneys, to tell him she wanted a divorce. Mr. Tosti and his partner, Irwin Durben, had been doing work for my grandfather since the 1950s. Even before my parents separated, Mr. Tosti had been my mother’s main contact for anything having to do with me, my brother, or money. He became her confidant; in the bleak landscape of the Trump family, he stood out as a warm and supportive ally, and she considered him a friend.
As genuinely kind as Mr. Tosti may have been, he also knew on which side his bread was buttered. Despite the fact that my mother had her own counsel, the divorce agreement might as well have been dictated by my grandfather. He knew that his daughter-in-law had no idea how much money my father’s family had or what his future prospects, as the son of an exceedingly wealthy man, might be.
My mother received $100 a week in alimony plus $50 a week for child support. At the time, those weren’t insignificant sums, especially considering that the big expenses, such as school, camp tuition, and medical insurance, were taken care of separately. My father was also responsible for paying the rent. Because my grandfather owned the building we lived in, it was only $90 a month. (I learned many years later that my brother and I each owned 10 percent of the Highlander, so in retrospect, charging us rent at all seems excessive.) Dad’s rent obligation was capped at $250, which limited our ability to move if we ever wanted to relocate to a better apartment or neighborhood. My father, the scion of a family that at the time was worth well over a hundred million dollars, agreed to pay for private school and college. But Mr. Tosti had to approve our vacations. There were no marital assets to split, so my mother’s total net worth was the $600 she got every month, an amount that wouldn’t change over the next decade. After expenses, there was barely enough left over for Mom to contribute to her annual Christmas fund, let alone save up to buy a house.
My mother got full custody of me and my brother, as was customary at the time, but visitation rights weren’t specified: “Mr. Trump shall be free to see [the children], on reasonable notice, at all reasonable times.” In the vast majority of cases, visitation meant having the kids every other weekend and one night a week for dinner. That’s eventually what my parents’ arrangement evolved into, but at the beginning there were no formal rules.
* * *
The Steeplechase development was permanently blocked in 1969, but eventually the city purchased the land back from my grandfather. He walked away with $1.3 million in profit for having done nothing but ruin a beloved city landmark. My dad was left with nothing but the blame.
CHAPTER SEVEN Parallel Lines
When Freddy (in 1960) and Donald (in 1968) joined Trump Management, each had a similar expectation: to become his father’s right-hand man and then succeed him. They had, at different times and in different ways, been groomed to fit the part, never lacking for funds to buy expensive clothes and luxury cars. The similarities ended there.
Freddy quickly found that his father was unwilling to make room for him or delegate him any but the most mundane tasks, a problem that came to a head at the height of the construction at Trump Village. Feeling trapped, unappreciated, and miserable, he left to find his success elsewhere. At age twenty-five, he was a professional pilot, flying 707s for TWA and supporting his young family. That would turn out to be the pinnacle of Freddy’s personal and professional life. At twenty-six and back at Trump Management, the chimerical chance for rehabilitation ostensibly offered to him at Steeplechase evaporated, and his prospects were at an end.
By 1971, my dad had been working for my grandfather, with the exception of his ten months as a pilot, for eleven years. Nonetheless, Fred promoted Donald, then only twenty-four, to the position of president of Trump Management. He’d been on the job for only three years and had very little experience and even fewer qualifications, but Fred didn’t seem to mind.
The truth was, Fred Trump didn’t need either one of his sons at Trump Management. He promoted himself to CEO, but nothing about his job description changed: he was a landlord. Fred hadn’t been a developer since the failure of Steeplechase six years earlier, so Donald’s role as president remained amorphous. In the early 1970s, with New York City on the brink of economic collapse, the federal government was cutting back on the FHA (in large part because of the cost of the Vietnam War), so no more FHA funding was available to Fred. Mitchell-Lama, a New York State–sponsored program to provide affordable housing that funded Trump Village, also ground to a halt.
As a business move, promoting Donald was pointless. What exactly was he being promoted to do? My grandfather had no development projects, the political power structure he’d depended on for decades was unraveling, and New York City was in dire financial straits. The main purpose of the promotion was to punish and shame Freddy. It was the latest in a long line of such punishments, but it was almost certainly the worst, especially given the context in which it happened.
Fred was determined to find a role for Donald. He had begun to realize that although his middle son didn’t have the temperament for the day-to-day attention to detail that was required to run his business, he had something more valuable: bold ideas and the chutzpah to realize them. Fred had long harbored aspirations to expand his empire across the river into Manhattan, the Holy Grail of New York City real estate developers. His early career had demonstrated that he had a knack for self-promotion, dissembling, and hyperbole. But as the first-generation son of German immigrants, Fred had English as his second language and he needed to improve his communication skills—he had taken the Dale Carnegie course for a reason, and it wasn’t to boost his self-confidence. But the course had been a failure. And there was another obstacle, perhaps even more difficult to overcome: Fred’s mother, as forward thinking as she had been in some ways, was generally very austere and traditional. It was okay for her son to be successful and rich. It was not okay for him to show off.
Donald had no such restraint. He hated Brooklyn as much as Freddy did but for very different reasons—the bleak working-class smallness of it, the lack of “potential.” He couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Trump Management was located on Avenue Z, right in the middle of Beach Haven in South Brooklyn, one of my grandfather’s largest apartment complexes. He hadn’t made many alterations. The narrow outer office was crammed with too many desks, and the small windows admitted little light. If Donald had thought of the surrounding buildings and complexes in terms of number of units, the value of the ground leases, and the sheer volume of income that poured into Trump Management every month, he would have recognized the huge opportunity. Instead, whenever he stood outside the office and surveyed the utilitarian sameness of Beach Haven, he must have felt suffocated by the sense that it was all beneath him. A future in Brooklyn wasn’t what he wanted for himself, and he was determined to get out as quickly as possible.
* * *
Besides being driven around Manhattan by a chauffeur whose salary his father’s company paid, in a Cadillac his father’s company leased to “scope out properties,” Donald’s job description seems to have included lying about his “accomplishments” and allegedly refusing to rent apartments to black people (which would become the subject of a Justice Department lawsuit accusing my grandfather and Donald of discrimination).
Donald dedicated a significant portion of his time to crafting an image for himself among the Manhattan circles he was desperate to join. Having grown up a member of the first television generation, he had spent hours watching the medium, the episodic
nature of which appealed to him. That helped shape the slick, superficial image he would come to both represent and embody. His comfort with portraying that image, along with his father’s favor and the material security his father’s wealth afforded him, gave him the unearned confidence to pull off what even at the beginning was a charade: selling himself not just as a rich playboy but as a brilliant, self-made businessman.
In those early days, that expensive endeavor was being enthusiastically, if clandestinely, funded by my grandfather. Fred didn’t immediately realize the scope of Donald’s limitations and had no idea that he was essentially promoting a fiction, but Donald was happy to spend his father’s money either way. For his part, Fred was determined to keep money pouring into his son’s pocket. In the late 1960s, for example, Fred developed a high-rise for the elderly in New Jersey, a project that was in part an exercise in how to get government subsidies (Fred received a $7.8 million, practically interest-free loan to cover 90 percent of the cost of the project’s construction) and in part an example of how far he was willing to go to enrich his second son. Although Donald put no money toward the development costs of the building, he received consulting fees, and he was paid to manage the property, a job for which there were already full-time employees on site. That one project alone netted Donald tens of thousands of dollars a year despite his having done essentially nothing and having risked nothing to develop, advance, or manage it.
In a similar sleight of hand, Fred bought Swifton Gardens, an FHA project originally costing $10 million to build, at auction for $5.6 million. In addition, he secured a $5.7 million mortgage, which also covered the cost of upgrades and repairs, essentially paying zero dollars for the buildings. When he later sold the property for $6.75 million, Donald got all of the credit and took most of the profits.
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