Did Donald Trump’s father give him $400 million like Kamala Harris said in the debate?
Donald Trump claims that he is a self-made billionaire with only a “small” loan from his father, but an analysis by the New York Times tells another story.
The first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump was a heated affair with both candidates trading barbs. They discussed, or at least attempted to, a wide range of issues that it appeared the Democrat was more prepared to handle.
During the debate she tried to present to the audience why she would make a better president for middle class voters because of her own experience growing up and how she’s worked to implement policies that help those climbing the social ladder. She compared that to Trump’s own policies while he was in the White House and how he made his fortune. She claimed that the real estate mogul got a whopper of a boost from his late father, something Trump denied saying to the effect if only he had been so lucky.
Did Donald Trump’s father give him $400 million like Kamala Harris said in the debate?
Trump has often claimed that he received a “very small loan in 1975″ from his father, Fred Trump, of $1 million to get started in business. However, that was refuted by a The New York Times report in 2018 that looked at over 100,000 pages of financial documents that showed Donald Trump “participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents.”
The outlet said that an analysis of “a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records” revealed that he received what would have been equivalent to $413 million built up from the time he was toddler to the present day.
This vast wealth transfer to him and his siblings, over $1 billion according to the report, was made possible by him allegedly helping his parents dodge taxes. The then president and the White House dismissed the story.
Donald Trump lost a civil tax fraud case this year brought against him by the State of New York where he was ordered to pay over $464 million in fines. After he originally said he couldn’t cover the bond for that amount, he was only required to pay slightly more than a third of that, which he did in cash, in order to prevent his assets from being seized while he appeals the decision.