All in the Family by Fred Trump Review: Dollars Over Blood

Forget about the sanctity of the human family or its sticky glue of love. If you’re a Trump, the institution is a convenient mechanism for ensuring inheritance, whether of gilded financial assets or brazen moral defects. Trumps are branded merchandise, and their dynastic DNA is a double helix of greed, graft, and feuding malice.

Since numbers on ledgers are what matter to this mercenary dynasty, they advance arithmetically. In All in the Family, the last in a series of Fred Trumps identifies his great-grandfather – who absconded from Germany to avoid military service and founded a property empire by establishing a chain of brothels in Canada – as Fred Zero. His son Fred I, a rack-renting landlord in the New York suburbs, then begat Fred II, who defied the family by preferring a career as an airline pilot. Reduced to a “second-tier Trump,” Fred II drank himself to an early death, making his younger brother Donald the heir apparent. Fred III, the author of this memoir, aspires to be “a different kind of Trump” but coyly trades on his tainted surname, describing himself on LinkedIn as “a third-generation member of a prominent New York real estate family.”

Trumpism is, as Fred III puts it, essentially about “name promotion.” Fred I advertised the homes he built by anchoring a yacht emblazoned with Trump signs off Coney Island on summer weekends. The logo has since adorned hotels, golf clubs, a failed airline, a dodgy university, and several bankrupt casinos. It currently sells Bibles, high-top sneakers that yell “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT,” and a Victory cologne that purportedly wafts out the essence of Donald.

The “T-word,” almost as odious as the forbidden N-word, which Donald is remembered using when angry about vandals damaging his car, undergoes some slick mutations in this chronicle. Fred Zero was born Friedrich Drumpf, which sounds like a belch or sneeze. Anglicized, the surname evokes trump cards and trumped-up accusations, aligning better with the family’s ruthlessly competitive creed. Fred I’s middle name was Christ, but worried this might repel Jewish tenants in his New York apartment blocks, he dropped the “h” and called himself Crist instead.

The other Trumps remained at their adding machines, policing succession. Donald’s sister, Maryanne – a judge who retired after a misconduct charge – complained because Fred III jumped the queue by producing Cristopher. According to her theory of primogeniture, her own son, Fred I’s oldest grandchild, had the right to marry and procreate first. When Donald’s creditors threatened foreclosure during the 1990s, Maryanne and other siblings produced a will, altered by the senile Fred I, disinheriting Fred II’s offspring and cruelly cutting off the medical insurance for Fred III’s severely disabled son, William.

Fred III and his sister, Mary, sued to claw back a portion of the spoils. Mary, a trained psychologist, declared war on the family in her book Too Much and Never Enough. Published during Donald’s re-election campaign in 2020, the book accuses him of “mass murder” due to his pandemic mismanagement. Fred III’s charges against their uncle are milder. Anxious to maintain a semblance of peace, Fred III fondly reminisces about his access to the Oval Office and takes pride in his complimentary membership to a Trump golf club. The family’s anecdotes about Donald’s bratty behavior amount, as Fred III sees it, to little more than “stupid kid stuff.” These infantile urges still activate the old man who itches to regain power and could translate into authoritarian policies if he is re-elected.

Despite a settlement, the financial dispute with the aunts and uncles continues to rankle. For the Trumps, Fred III realizes, “Blood only went so far – as far as the dollar signs.” Arguing about his grandfather’s will, he defends the protocols of “multigenerational wealth,” combining genetic and economic heritage. As he ought to know, families pass on congenital failings along with financial assets. His father once told him that he had “inherited a bad gene” and warned him about drinking. Fred III admits to his own struggle with alcoholism.

Donald advised Fred III that rather than spending money on his disabled son’s care, he should “just let him die and move down to Florida.” This advice from Donald shocks, especially coupled with the follow-up. Why Florida? It’s Donald’s home now, given his pariah status in New York, and he commends it as a moral Bermuda Triangle.

Fred III makes a final attempt to redeem his tarnished lineage by citing “something that William inherited from our family.” It’s not a trust fund, but rather William’s “heart-melting blue eyes,” his only means of communicating with the world. But a harsher truth is proclaimed by the book’s epigraph from The Godfather, where Michael, soon to be mob boss, shrugs that the Corleones’ gangsterism is “not personal, it’s strictly business.” Donald, who projects condemnation onto others, used to rant about “the Biden crime family”; indirectly, he was describing the vicious, venal conduct of his own clan.

Source: Guardian