Donald Trump’s Father Was Arrested At A Ku Klux Klan Riot Really
Is that why Trump didnt initially condemn the Klan endorsement?
While Donald Trump deals with the fallout of allegations that hes not really as xenophobic as he appears, history shows that his connection to the Ku Klux Klan hits close to home.
The Washington Post reports that Trumps father, Fred, was arrested after a 1927 brawl lead by the Ku Klux Klan in Queens, New York. On Memorial Day, 1,000 Klansmen donned their robes and marched through the streets of the Jamaica neighborhood. The march turned into a riot, and Fred Trump and six others were arrested. The records dont indicate if Trump was one of the hooded Klansman, but he shared an attorney with the other men who were taken into custody.
Tech media outlet Boing Boing originally uncovered this report last September. Trump denied his fathers involvement, but the possible historical connection takes on new meaning in light of Trumps new, strange relationship with the Klan. Former KKK leader David Duke professed his support of Trumps campaign last Thursday . Trump tweeted a disavowal of Duke that he had previously issued at a press conference, yet he stumbled on CNNs State of the Union and said he knew nothing about David Duke and failed to outright condemn him or the Klan. He blamed the incident on a faulty earpiece that he said made it difficult to understand the interviewers questions.
Donald Trump Trump Family Members Members Of Kkk
Donald Trump, Trump Family Members, Members of KKK-Fiction!& Unproven!Summary of eRumor:Accusations that Donald Trump is a member of the Ku Klux Klan, or that Trumps father was a member of the KKK, have gone viral.The Truth:Accusations about the Trump familys ties to the Ku Klux Klan are both false and unproven.These accusations surfaced in September 2015 after a New York Times report was unearthed from 1927 that identified a man named Fred Trump, the name of Donalds father, among those arrested in a brawl between KKK members and the NYPD. Fred Trumps address was the same as an address he listed in Census records, but other details of the arrest are unclear, Boing Boingreports:
In an article subtitled Klan assails policeman, Fred Trump is named in among those taken in during a late May battle in which 1,000 Klansmen and 100 policemen staged a free-for-all. At least two officers were hurt during the event, after which the Klans activities were denounced by the citys Police Commissioner, Joseph A. Warren.
The Klan not only wore gowns, but had hoods over their faces almost completely hiding their identity, Warren was quoted as saying in the article, which goes on to identify seven men arrested in the near-riot of the parade.
Named alongside Trump are John E Kapp and John Marcy , Fred Lyons, Thomas Caroll, Thomas Erwin, and Harry J Free. They were arraigned in Jamaica, N.Y. All seven were represented by the same lawyers, according to the article.
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He married a woman from his German hometown, Kallstadt, where his parents had owned vineyards, and attempted to return home with his fortune. But when his draft dodging came to the fore, the couple lost their Bavarian citizenship and were obliged to return to America for good. There, they had three children: Trumps father, Fred, was the middle child. Born in the Bronx borough of New York City in 1905, Fred Trump was an all-American child who spoke no German. Later, he would become one of the citys most successful young businessmen, amassing a fortune even as many around him slumped into financial ruin.
In the mid-1930s, a young Fred Trump went to a party dressed in a fine suit and sporting his trademark moustache. Two Scottish sisters were at that same party in Queens: The younger one, Mary Anne MacLeod, was a domestic worker considering a return to her island homeland. Something clicked between the maid and the mogul, write Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher in their biography Trump Revealed. When Trump returned that night to the home he shared with his mother, the authors continued, he made an announcement: He had met the woman he planned to marry.
Fred and Mary Trump, parents of Donald Trump.
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Making The Man: To Understand Trump Look At His Relationship With His Dad
The art of understanding The Donald is in demand right now. His relationship with his father helped shape him but theyre not as alike as youd think
The art of understanding Donald Trump is much in demand right now. What is his appeal? Why does he talk in that very recognizable cadence? What is his relationship with truth, exactly? And how does he manage to spout out such gibberish especially in front of the editorial board of the Washington Post and get away with it?
There are many possible angles of attack. We get op-eds about his alleged similarities with Hitler, about the era of Republican decadence, about how the media gives him too much attention. But one angle that largely goes unexamined is the place even the dimmest of therapists would start: his dad. And of course, theres more to heredity than money. For example, theres hair.
Everyone agrees that Frederick Christ Trump was a more retiring sort than his son, Donald. But he was not immune to the siren song of hair dye. According to Gwenda Blairs book The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate, he was, late in life, particularly fond of a shade of red that bore a hint of magenta. Photographs also reveal that Fred liked to wear his hair a little longer than the average man, combed up into a smooth wave away from the head. Stop me if this starts sounding familiar.
Immigration To The United States
With several siblings having already established themselves there and in Canada, MacLeod may have first visited the United States for a short stay in December 1929. She was issued immigration visa number 26698 at Glasgow on February 17, 1930. On May 2, MacLeod left Glasgow on board the RMS Transylvania arriving in New York City on May 11 . She declared she intended to become a U.S. citizen and would be staying permanently in America. She was one of tens of thousands of young Scots who left for the United States or Canada during this period, Scotland having suffered badly the consequences of the Clearances and World War I. The alien passenger list of the Transylvania lists her occupation as a domestic worker.
Arriving in the U.S. with $50 , MacLeod lived with her older sister Christina Matheson on Long Island and worked as a domestic servant for at least four years. One of these jobs appears to have been as a nanny for a well-to-do family in a New York suburb, but the position was eliminated due to economic difficulties caused by the Great Depression. As a 2016 account in Scottish newspaper The National put it, she “started life in America as a dirt-poor servant escaping the even worse poverty of her native land.” Having obtained a U.S. Re-entry Permitonly granted to immigrants intending to stay and gain citizenshipshe returned to Scotland on the SS Cameronia on September 12, 1934. She was recorded as living in New York by April 1935 in the 1940 U.S. Census.
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According to a New York Times article published in June 1927, a man with the name and address of Donald Trumps father was arraigned after Klan members attacked cops in Queens, N.Y.
In an article subtitled Klan assails policeman, Fred Trump is named in among those taken in during a late May battle in which 1,000 Klansmen and 100 policemen staged a free-for-all.
Donald Trumps father was only 21 years old at the time. He and six others were arrested, charged and were represented by the same lawyers in court. Blum is careful to point out that Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Road, Jamaica, was discharged. and adds:
To be clear, this is not proof that Trump seniorwho would later go on to become a millionaire real estate developerwas a member of the Ku Klux Klan or even in attendance at the event. Despite sharing lawyers with the other men, its conceivable that he may have been an innocent bystander, falsely named, or otherwise the victim of mistaken identity during or following a chaotic event.
Cenk Uygur from TYT argues the arrest of Donald Trumps father during a KKK rally doesnt necessarily reflect badly on the Donald. After all, a lot of these guys fathers and grandfathers did some questionable things. Like Fred Kochs dealings with Josef Stalin and Prescott Bushs business ties with Nazi Germany before World War II.
if you go back far enough, are you going to find out a lot of white peoples parents and grandparents in 1927 were deeply racist? Probably.
The Couple Has Five Children
With all the drama surrounding Donald Trump, we forget that the man also has siblings! The eldest child is Maryanne Trump Barry. She is a senior judge at the United States Court of Appeals and was appointed by then President, Bill Clinton. She recently made the news for a $4 million donation to Fairfield University. Fred Jr. was the second son, who passed away in 1981 due to alcoholism. The third child, Elizabeth was an executive assistant at Chase Manhattan Bank. Donald and Robert were the youngest sons and Robert inherited his fathers property management company.
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Details On The Incident
The information available in the New York Times article made it difficult to figure out whether Trumps father was directly involved in the melee or was simply a bystander, falsely accused or otherwise the victim of mistaken identity during the chaotic event. There is no indication in the article that Trumps father was a member or supporter of the KKK.
Police records are not available.
According to the BoingBoing article, a person answering calls at the New York City Police Departments Records Section said arrest reports dating to that period were not available.
A report in the Washington Post says, “A contemporaneous article from the Daily Star notes that Trump was detained ‘on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so.'”
How The 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act Is Being Used In This Latest Trump Lawsuit
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and the NAACP are suing former President Donald Trump and his longtime ally Rudy Giuliani for allegedly conspiring with a pair of hate groups to storm the U.S. Capitol and block the Electoral College count in January. And theyre using a 150-year-old law as the basis of the suit.
Thompson and the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, allege in the suit, obtained by NBC News, that Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers used intimidation, harassment, and threats, to stop the vote count and caused the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in the process. This, they said, violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
I guess it tells you something when you can use a Ku Klux Klan law from the 1870s, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University. Its part of a series of laws enacted after the Civil War. Everything old is, unfortunately, new again.”
“Thompson has standing because they interfered directly with him working to certify the election, Levin said.
In response to the lawsuit, Jason Miller, a Trump adviser, said the former president did not plan, produce or organize the Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse. President Trump did not incite or conspire to incite any violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6.” He added that Giuliani is not currently representing Trump in any legal matters.
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In 1927 Donald Trumps Father Was Arrested After A Klan Riot In Queens
This piece has been updated.
When he was asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday whether he would condemn the praise of former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, Donald Trump .
“I dont know anything about David Duke, okay,” Trump said. “I dont know anything about what youre even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. I don’t know, did he endorse me? Or what’s going on. Because I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists.”
In 2000, Trump as a member of the Reform Party because the “Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep.” As Trump himself noted on Twitter, he also disavowed Duke in a news conference earlier this week.
But this incident also brings to mind another report, unearthed in September .
On Memorial Day 1927, brawls erupted in New York led by sympathizers of the Italian fascist movement and the Ku Klux Klan. In the fascist brawl, which took place in the Bronx, two Italian men were killed by anti-fascists. In Queens, 1,000 white-robed Klansmen marched through the Jamaica neighborhood, eventually spurring an all-out brawl in which seven men were arrested.
One of those arrested was Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Rd. in Jamaica.
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Freds Mother Helped Start His Business
After his fathers death, Trump worked after school, carrying lumber to construction sites. He also briefly worked as a carpenter. In 1920, at the mere age of 15, Fred started his real estate and construction business, named Elizabeth Trump & Son, after his mother. His mother had given him a loan of $800 to build a house in Woodhaven, which he sold for $7000. Fred continued to build his construction empire by developing multiple projects and other apartment buildings in Coney Island, Brooklyn, Flatbush and Queens.
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Trump Denies The Arrest
Donald Trump quickly denounced claims that his father had been arrested.
“He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened,” Trump told the Daily Mail during an interview in September 2015. “This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It’s a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”
Donald Trump And The Ku Klux Klan: A History
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For months, as Donald Trump developed his political repertoire, he adopted an uncharacteristic reply for questions about fascism and the Ku Klux Klan: silence, or something close to it.
He used the technique as early as last August, when his opponents, and the press, still generally regarded him as a summer amusement. On August 26th, the Bloomberg Television anchor John Heilemann brought up David Duke, the former Klan Grand Wizard, who had said that Trump was “the best of the lot in the 2016 campaign. Trump replied that he had no idea who Duke was. Heilemann asked if Trump would repudiate Dukes endorsement. “Sure, Trump said, if that would make you feel better, I would certainly repudiate. I don’t know anything about him.” Changing tack, Heilemann pressed Trump about an article in this magazine, which described Trumps broad support among neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and other members of the far right who were drawn in by his comments about Mexicans. Trump maintained a posture of indifference. Honestly, John, Id have to read the story. A lot of people like me. The interview moved on to other topics.
It should be noted that Trumps unfamiliarity with Duke is a recent condition. In 2000, Trump issued a statement that he was no longer considering a run for President with the backing of the Reform Party, partly because it now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke.
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