…that his dad was in the KKK. And Donnie still is in denial, which is good for a sardonic smile.
With apologies to the Beatles (and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), a headline from all those years ago that ought still to haunt him today:
Donald Trump’s father was arrested after a Ku Klux Klan riot in the 1920s, news reports from the time suggest.
An article from a June 1927 edition of the New York Times records seven men being arrested after a brawl in New York, including “Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Road, Jamaica” – the same name and address as the current US President’s father.
The fight was said to have been between members of the white supremacist Klan and supporters of the Italian fascist movement.
[…]
The fight took place on 29 May 1927 – the US Memorial Day – at a time when New York authorities were trying to halt the KKK’s growing presence in the city. Originally founded in the 19th Century, the Klan was reformed in 1915 and became a violent organisation that promoted white nationalism and targeted black Americans.
Asked by the New York Times last year whether his father had been arrested at a Klan event, Donald Trump repeatedly denied it, insisting “it never happened” and saying it was “totally false” that his father lived on Devonshire Road, despite records appearing to confirm it to be true.
“We lived on Wareham,” he said. “The Devonshire — I know there is a road ‘Devonshire,’ but I don’t think my father ever lived on Devonshire.”
But yes, THAT Fred Trump DID live at that address on Devonshire Road. He was 21 at the time, and hadn’t yet met Mary Anne MacLeod, his future wife (and the Donald’s future mother).
Fred Trump was charged with “failing to disperse”, which strongly suggests that he was involved in the riot between police and the two brawling fascistic factions — one supporting the Italian Fascists and the other, the KKK. Then, as now, the far right were jockeying for a monopoly on the nation’s hardcore bigots. And since young Freddy was neither a police officer nor an Italian, which faction do you suppose he belonged to?
Of course, Donnie remains in denial. He doesn’t even know who David Duke is, or what white supremacy is, if you can believe him, but he got an endorsement from the current head of the KKK. One doesn’t get that for just nothing. I have a strong suspicion Donnie got that endorsement the way he got everything else in his life: strictly on the basis of who his daddy was.
Oh sure, the evidence for Fred Trump’s association with the KKK is all circumstantial. But it’s still quite damning. After all, he’s the same “Old Man Trump” that Woody Guthrie despised to the point of writing an anti-racist ballad about him:
Ol’ Fred may (or may not) have cut his KKK ties, but he still wouldn’t rent to non-white families. That is a fact. He (and his son after him) kept New York City illegally segregated with his housing policies. That too is a fact. And the Trump family fortune, which began when Grandpa Fritz became a pimp in the Yukon, grew astronomically under the stewardship of his son Fred, who made his dirty pie higher by renting only to whites. That is a fact.
Donald Fucking Drumpf isn’t a self-made man. He is the scion of grubby profiteers, draft dodgers and illegal immigrants who made their fortune on sexism and racism. And he’s proud of his legacy, although he’ll never admit that discrimination is at the roots of it all.