How did we get to a point where Donald Trump – Donald Trump – is the most powerful man in the world? With a snap of his fingers, he can decimate world finance, his pen stroke can remove the rights from millions of people, and with a phone call he can unleash nuclear armageddon.
It’s the kind of thing that’ll drive you insane the more you think about it, so our advice is to just not do that. Instead, why not focus on his ancestry rather than what bonkers thing he’s going to do next? The Trump family story genuinely does shed some light on the man himself, casting him in a somewhat hypocritical light.
Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York, making him unambiguously American. However, his family roots are spread across Europe. On his father’s side, Trump’s family is German. His grandfather, Friedrich Trump, was born in 1869 in Kallstadt, a small town in Bavaria.
Friedrich was facing hard times in his homeland and, at age 16, became an immigrant to the United States in 1885. (irony alert!) He briefly worked as a barber before venturing into business, running a restaurant and hotel during the Klondike Gold Rush. Friedrich briefly returned to Germany, marrying Elisabeth Christ in 1902, before settling permanently in New York.
Their son, Fred Trump—Donald’s father—was born in 1905, making Donald a second-generation American on his paternal side. The Trump family’s Germanic roots have occasionally been a headache, particularly during the World Wars, so they occasionally claimed to be of Swedish origin.
Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was born in 1912 on the Isle of Lewis, an island in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. She emigrated (irony alert!) to the United States in 1930 at the age of 18, working as a domestic servant before meeting and marrying Fred Trump in 1936.
Donald Trump is a mix of German and Scottish ancestry, making him a literal product of the United States welcoming immigrants to its shores and providing them with the opportunities to succeed in life. Naturally, Trump’s family would have a much harder time coming to America now, as their presidential progeny is in the process of yanking up the ladder behind him to prevent the modern-day equivalents of Friedrich, Elisabeth, and Mary from being able to establish lives here.
You could argue that those were different times, that “the country is full”, or that this is such a common family story as to be unremarkable, but the vague “Great America” referenced in “Make America Great Again” was built on the shoulders and with the sweat of hard-working immigrants.
Published: Apr 10, 2025 06:57 am