During a presser with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, President Donald Trump claimed that his father was “born in a very wonderful place in Germany” while discussing the country’s military spending.
“My father is German,” Trump told reporters. “Right. Was German. And born in a very wonderful place in Germany and so I have a great feeling for Germany.”
Facts First: This is untrue. Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was born in the Bronx.
Trump has made this claim before, but in his famed book he (or his ghostwriter) got closer to – and further from — the facts.
In “Art of the Deal,” Trump writes that his grandfather Friedrich Trump “came here from Sweden as a child” (a fact which some confuse as talking about his father instead) and that his father “Fred Trump was born in New Jersey in 1905.”
Neither of these assertions is totally accurate. Trump’s grandfather came back to the US – which he first immigrated to in his teen years – from Germany after being expelled from the country. Soon after Trump’s grandfather and grandmother came back to the US, Trump’s father Fred Trump was born, but not in New Jersey.
An image of his birth certificate, posted by the Smoking Gun, lists a Bronx address as Fred Trump’s birthplace.
Trump has made this claim so many times we expect to see it again. You’ll know where to find us.
