Donald Trump Family Tree - YouTube

Hi. My name is Jack Rackam and today I’m going to show you the family tree of Donald

Trump, the 45th president of the United States and one of the most controversial political

figures in the world today. I’ll be tracing his paternal line back to its roots in Germany,

looking at how his father and grandfather amassed their wealth, and going through his

immediate family, including his siblings, wives, and children.

[INTRO]

We begin all the way up here with Johann Paul Trump. He was born in the small town of Kallstadt

in what is today Germany to a family of wine growers. You may have heard that this man’s

last name was actually “Drumpf”, especially if you’re a fan of late night show host

John Oliver. This theory is now under scrutiny, as the connection is unclear, but in any case

the name derives from the word trumpet, which in turn comes from the word triumph, and now

the word Trump has come to mean one-upping.

Johann Trump is also the great-grandfather of Henry J. Heinz, founder of the famous ketchup

company, through his daughter Charlotte, who married Johann Heinz.

Skipping a couple of generations, we come to Friedrich Trump, who is Donald’s grandfather

and second cousin to the Heinz founder. He came to New York when he was just 16 to escape

military duty in Germany in 1885. He worked there as a barber for several years, before

moving to Seattle in 1891. There he led a tumultuous, but very lucrative career. He

bought a restaurant in Seattle, which also served as an illegal brothel, and then he

got involved in funding mining operations. This eventually took him to Canada during

the Klondike Gold Rush, where he continued to run restaurants and brothels. The government

eventually cracked down on prostitution, gambling, and liquor in 1901 and so he left, having

already made a small fortune. He returned to Germany very briefly, where he met and

proposed to his wife, but by 1902 the two of them were back to New York, and then in

1904 they moved back to Germany on account of his wife’s homesickness. But the German

officials pieced together that Friedrich had originally left the country to evade military

service, and so he and his family were banished from the country. All in all, through his

various business ventures, including some real estate, he had amassed a net worth of

around half a million of today’s dollars when he died in 1918 due to respiratory illness

caused by a rampant pandemic - the Spanish flu.

He was succeeded by his wife Elizabeth, who grew her late husband’s real estate business

in a massive way under the name E. Trump & Son, and remained involved in the business until

her death in 1966.

That son was Fred Trump, who was only 13 when his father died, hence Elizabeth’s name

being used for the company. When he grew up, he married a Scottish-born woman named Mary

Anne McLeod. By the time the Second World War began, anti-German sentiment was at an

all-time high in America, so Fred began telling people he was actually from Swedish descent.

That cover story carried over until the 80s and 90s, repeated by his son Donald Trump,

though he now admits his paternal line does, in fact, come from Germany. As a landlord,

Fred Trump’s business dealings often came under scrutiny. In the public eye, Woody Guthrie

wrote an unreleased song about him called “Old Man Trump”. But he also fell under

the scrutiny of the government on many occasions - he was investigated for profiteering, code

violations, and racial discrimination. A number of people working for him came forward saying

they were told discrimination was against the law, but nevertheless that they were told,

quote “not to rent to blacks”. What’s more, it’s likely that Fred Trump was at

one point a member of the Ku Klux Klan, based on his arrest during a 1927 Klan rally in

which all seven arrestees were alleged to be dressed in Klan attire. In 1971 he made

his son Donald the President of the Trump Organization, leaving Manhattan to him while

Fred focused on other burrows.

But before turning to Fred’s children, a brief overview of his siblings. There’s

Fred’s younger brother John, who became a scientist and a professor at MIT and is

the smart uncle Donald Trump sometimes brags about, as well as his aunt Elizabeth Trump,

about whom we don’t have much information.

Fred and his wife Anne had five children. The oldest, Maryanne Trump, was actually involved

in politics long before her brother. She was a judge on the third circuit of the United

States Court of Appeals, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1999, and she served until just

last year. Fred Junior became a pilot, but died in 1981 at the age of 42 of a heart attack

as the result of his alcoholism. According to Donald Trump, this was the primary motivator

behind his decision to avoid alcohol and cigarettes for the remainder of his life.

Fred Jr. had two children, Fred III and Mary L. Trump. His daughter Mary is the author

of the recently published tell-all book, Too Much and Never Enough. She and her brother

both have had bad blood with Donald since 1999, after Fred Senior died and left Fred

III and Mary out of his will. The two claimed this was a result of the rest of Fred’s

children, Donald and his siblings, influencing Fred Senior in his state of dementia, and

sued. As a response, Donald cut the medical support he had previously promised to Fred

III’s infant son, who was born with cerebral palsy.

Donald’s sister Elizabeth worked as an executive at Chase Bank Manhattan and married film producer

James Grau. She’s currently retired in Florida. Donald’s brother Robert currently works

as an executive for the Trump organization.

As for Donald Trump himself, you’ve probably heard enough and formed your own opinions

about him whether as a result of his foreign policy, his stance on policing in America,

or his approach to the coronavirus pandemic. He’s been married three times and has five

children.

His first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, was a model born in the Czech Republic. She had one marriage

previously before she met Donald, and the two were married in 1977. They had three children

together, and she took an active role in the family business.

Their first child, Donald Junior, is now 42 years old and working as an executive at the

Trump organization. He married Vanessa Haydon, with whom he had 2 daughters and 3 sons, the

oldest of whom is Don III. He and his wife divorced in 2018 and he’s now dating former

Fox news host Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Donald’s second child with Ivana is Ivanka Trump, now 38. She too was an executive at

the Trump organization, and is now an official advisor to her father in the White House.

She has her own line of fashion items and is married to Jared Kushner, with whom she

has one daughter and 2 sons. And actually prior to getting married she converted to

Judaism. Jared too is now an advisor to the president, though his family also has its

roots in New York real estate. His father Charles, like Trump, is a major figure in

the industry, but he also has a string of bad press behind him. He’s been found guilty

of tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal contributions to Democrat campaigns, and has

served time in federal prison.

Jared’s paternal grandfather Joseph, born in Poland, had the last name Berkowitz, but

in a rare event in family trees, he took his wife Rae’s name of Kushner. She came from

a more established family and helped 350 Jews escape via tunnel during World War 2. Both

are holocaust survivors.

Last of Ivana and Donald’s children is Eric trump, now 36. He is, perhaps unsurprisingly,

an executive at the Trump organization. He’s married to former CBS producer Lara Yunaska,

and together they had two children.

In 1991 Donald’s first wife Ivana filed for divorce, after he began an affair with

Marla Maples, and the divorce was granted on the grounds of “cruel and inhuman treatment”

by Donald. She’s currently unable to talk about details due to a confidentiality agreement.

She married two more times, but is currently single, and working in the fashion and beauty

business. Donald Trump then married Marla Maples, who had also been a model.

They have one child together, Tiffany Trump, now 26, and currently in law school. Since

2018 she’s been dating Michael Boulos, the son and heir of a Nigerian businessman of

Lebanese descent.

Marla and Donald divorced in 1999 after she was found with a bodyguard under a deserted

lifeguard stand at 4 in the morning, though both she and Trump deny she was having an

affair. Like Ivana, she is prohibited from speaking about her marriage on account of

prenuptial agreements and the terms of her divorce.

Donald Trump’s current wife, Melania Knauss, now 50, is a former model born in Slovenia,

and became an American citizen in 2006 after marrying Trump. She is the first First Lady

of the United States who was not born an American citizen. As First Lady, she has focused on

advocating against cyberbullying in her Be Best campaign.

She and Donald have one son, Barron Trump, who is currently 14 years old, and is fluent

in both English and Slovene.

Now before I go, I want to call attention to this Trump coat of arms. It’s based on

the coat of arms of Joseph E. Davies, a famous American lawyer and the second US ambassador

to the Soviet Union. That may seem like an unusual connection until you consider that

Davies married Marjorie Merriweather Post, owner of General Foods and the “Post”

cereal brand. She had previously built Mar-a-Lago in Florida as her mansion, and after she married

Davies, the coat of arms was used for the resort. Donald Trump then bought Mar-a-Lago

in 1985, keeping the coat of arms and adopting it for his various other businesses. The main

differences between his and the original being this extra decoration here, and that the word

“integrity” of Davies’ coat of arms is replaced with the word “Trump”. However,

since Davies’ coat of arms was granted officially by the UK and Trumps’ wasn’t, he has to

use a different coat of arms across the pond.

And that is the family tree of Donald Trump, the roots of his family and his business.

If you’re interested in learning the family history of other prominent politicians, you

can support this video by leaving a like and letting us know in the comments who you’d

like to see in the future. Thanks for watching.