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His grandfather Friedrich Trump immigrated to the US from Germany in 1885 and opened the family's first real estate office in Queens. Fred Trump then built up an empire of of over tens of thousands of low income apartment units in Brooklyn and Queens.
Regardless you have to acknowledge Trump is a master at branding, marketing, and publicity and have vastly expanded his dad's real estate empire.
Most amazing thing about Trump is the bounce back he pulled off when the commercial real estate slump of the 90's nearly wiped out his entire fortune and his net worth sank to the minus billions.
He used to joke during this time period, he'd walk on the streets of Manhatten looking at the bums and thinking to himself, "Right now these bums with just a couple bucks to their names have a higher net worth than I do".
I've been lucky to meet him 3 times, once in the Trump Tower gift shop where I was buying one of his books and he walked over to sign it, at the NYC heliport, and at a charity event at Mara-A-Lago. He's a friendly and interesting guy in person.
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