A week before the 2020 election, the BBC documentary on President Donald J. Trump, Meet the Trumps: From Immigrant to President, was yanked from Netflix.
I loved watching it many evenings as the dust settled after caring for my bedbound father, either at home or in the hospital as he fought for his life—and won. What a champ. He ‘came to’ on October 10, 2020 at 2 p.m. after nearly dying of sepsis. President Trump had just taken the stage and started talking and Dad, hearing him, perked up and opened his eyes. Dad loved Trump and is no doubt pulling for him now from his Heavenly perch.
That documentary, a preview of what to expect from the Trump presidency on the eve of his First Inauguration, provided such insight into the man, telling the story of his 16- year-old Grandfather Friedrich Trump, who made his way to America from the village of Kallstadt in the Bavaria Kingdom in 1885 and proceeded to make a pile of cash. After working as a barber in New York City’s Lower East Side, a trade he learned in the wake of his father’s 10-year illness leaving the family penniless, he hightailed it to Seattle in the recently-admitted state of Washington, to the meanest part of town, where people worked hard and played hard, and where he served them at his Dairy Restaurant on Washington Street in Pioneer Square.
Not content to rest on his laurels, he kept going where the opportunity was — but not before buying 40 acres in beautiful Pine Lake Plateau, a dozen miles east of Seattle, for $200, the Trump family’s first major real estate purchase. Now he was ready to head to Monte Cristo, site of rich mineral deposits, to open a hotel. But the mineral bubble burst and before long he was lured by the Klondike Goldrush along “Dead Horse Trail,” so called because conditions were so rough that horses regularly died en route. This gave Friedrich an idea: A pop-up restaurant to serve dead horse burgers! Then came “The Artic House” in Bennett, British Columbia which before long he moved lock-stock-and-barrel to Whitehorse, Yukon, the hotel frame destroyed in the rapids, simply reassembled.
Yes, the Trump DNA is one of survival and seizing opportunity.
Now Donald Trump, the ultimate survivor, is basically serving up politically dead democrats. Because whether or not they know it, when 25% of black Americans are telling pollsters Trump is their man, Democrats are toast.
The quest for new opportunity with impeccable timing is an amazing Trump through-line. To wit, the day after the Manhattan prosecutors stuck Trump with over $350 million in fines for allegedly inflating the value of his property to obtain bank loans, Trump had an announcement of his own: The SEC had cleared the Truth Social deal worth up to $10 billion.
Touche!
The prosecutor, Leticia James, had, of course, campaigned on ‘getting Trump.’ The very man who turned the city around when, in the 70s, “Fear City,” as it was called, having long since lost its “Fun City” branding, was on the verge of bankruptcy. He swooped in recognizing the desperation and the opportunity and revitalized the Commodore Hotel transforming it into the Grand Hyatt.
That was the start of the city’s turnaround.
In the same way, it seems clear, he will transform America, now in similarly desperate straits.
All those dead democrats will, no doubt, be put to very good use as he goes about transforming America. Maybe putting them to work deporting the tens of millions of illegals who have invaded our country under Biden’s watch/snooze.
Mary Claire Kendall is author of Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends, published in Madrid under the title También Dios pasa por Hollywood. She recently finished writing a book about the life of Ernest Hemingway viewed through the prism of faith due to be published in late 2024. New edition of her book Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends will be published on February 24, 2024.
Thank you for another great informative article. Always a history lesson.
Looking forward to your new book.