Summary of Michael D'Antonio's The Truth About Trump

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 On July 12, 1954, Trump was called to testify before a US Senate committee about $4 million in windfall profits he had taken from a government housing program for war veterans.

#2 Capehart, the Republican senator from Ohio, made the hearings into a traveling show that would tour the country and air live on TV. He subpoenaed Fred Trump, who gave a brilliant performance. He explained the complicated, but legal, means he used to get the most out of a program that seemed designed to benefit a builder who could read regulations as well as he could read a blueprint.

#3 Trump explained that the land under his Beach Haven development was held by a trust devoted to his children. The buildings, however, were owned by half a dozen corporations. Every year these six entities paid rent to the trust for the use of the land.

#4 Trump was a classic New York character, and he could have been drawn from a Gilded Age memoir of political corruption called Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. The Plunkitt in question was George Washington Plunkitt, a nineteenth-century New York State legislator who had famously declared, I saw my opportunities and I took ’em.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822522985

IRB Media

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Insights on Michael D'Antonio's The Truth About Trump

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

On July 12, 1954, Trump was called to testify before a US Senate committee about $4 million in windfall profits he had taken from a government housing program for war veterans.

#2

Capehart, the Republican senator from Ohio, made the hearings into a traveling show that would tour the country and air live on TV. He subpoenaed Fred Trump, who gave a brilliant performance. He explained the complicated, but legal, means he used to get the most out of a program that seemed designed to benefit a builder who could read regulations as well as he could read a blueprint.

#3

Trump explained that the land under his Beach Haven development was held by a trust devoted to his children. The buildings, however, were owned by half a dozen corporations. Every year these six entities paid rent to the trust for the use of the land.

#4

Trump was a classic New York character, and he could have been drawn from a Gilded Age memoir of political corruption called Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. The Plunkitt in question was George Washington Plunkitt, a nineteenth-century New York State legislator who had famously declared, I saw my opportunities and I took ’em.

#5

Fred Trump’s father, Friedrich, was a German immigrant who arrived in America in 1885. He began working as a barber in New York, but soon went prospecting for gold in the Pacific Northwest. He turned his nerve and hard work into wealth, and was a genuine American.

#6

John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in America, had invested in the mining region on the basis of a geologist’s highly optimistic reports. When the secret of no ore got out and Monte Cristo was abandoned, few complaints were made about the geologist’s mistake.

#7

Fred Trump, the son, was very ambitious and went into business with his mother, who was very mature for her age. They began developing small groups of houses on subdivided properties. Within two years, they had finished and sold dozens of homes.

#8

The stock market crash of 1929 changed what readers saw in Fitzgerald’s novel, and it became a cautionary tale. The Great Depression of the 1930s stuck, and almost everyone, even those with money, stopped spending.

#9

The American economy hit bottom in 1933, as the Great Depression pushed the official jobless rate to 25 percent and the drop in home values to 20 percent. In many places, conditions were far worse.

#10

The magic of real estate is no secret. In growing cities and towns, property owners understand that strong demand pushes values up. However, as demand and prices continue to climb, markets enter a bubble phase.

#11

The Lehrenkrauss family were extremely prominent in Brooklyn. They were so well-known that their comings and goings were recorded in the society pages, and their divorces appeared in the news columns.