An immigration success story!

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Published: Apr 10, 2025 06:57 am

How did we get to a point where – 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.