Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Meet the Trumps: From Immigrant to President (2017)

I’m always looking for that one tag that will get a lot of hits.  It seems that while Donald Trump may not get me the most, I do usually garner at least one comment.  (If Trump appears in the motion picture, that comment is less than flattering.)  Meet the Trumps is about Donald Trump, as well as his father and grandfather.  I suppose that the comment section should get interesting.

We start with Friedrich Trump, who started out in Bavaria.  He did all manner of things in America, including running a brothel and selling hamburgers made from horse meat.   When he came to America, he did so without the permission of the government, nor had he completed his military service.  That meant that he couldn’t get his citizenship back.

He married in America and had Fred Trump, who took to real estate.  His big thing seemed to be getting ever last penny out of his property.  When it came to Eisenhower’s plan to build housing for troops, Fred Trump seemingly overbilled.  (When caught, he claimed that the money was resting in his account, so I think it was more than a simple markup.)

When it came time to pass the business on to Fred Trump, Jr., it became apparent that Freddie wasn’t cut out for the ruthlessness that was expected of him  I mean, he actually thought that upgrading windows was a good idea.  Who improves their properties?  Thus, the business was passed along to Donald Trump, future president of the United States of America.

This appears to be an episode of a TV show called The Passionate Eye.  It’s not particularly hard hitting.  There are no big revelations  It seems to give more of an overview of the life of the three Trumps.  There wasn’t much that really surprised me.  I didn’t know anything about the grandfather, but it doesn’t really surprise me that he wasn’t let back into Bavaria.  (I am curious about his business selling horse burgers.  Did any of the customers know where the meat came from?)

This is one of those things where fans of Trump will decry it as fake news.  Those that don’t like him will probably know much of the stuff.  It seems to show a lack of empathy running back several generations.  Take Trump’s father making money off of a government project.  Yes, that is how business is run.  It seemed to me that he was profiteering.  If you’re building for troops, it’s not the kind of thing you make excessive profit on.  It should probably be viewed as steady work rather than a cash cow.

You could probably get several documentaries out of this.  The grandfather is probably interesting enough to get his own.  There are enough housing scandals that you could probably get a short documentary on each.  This is about what I would expect from an episodic documentary.

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