.

Donald Trump has been immersed in the real estate business all his life. He spent his weekends in New York working in the family real estate business in his teens while attending the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.

His German grandfather, Friedrich Trump (originally "Trumpf," and sometimes "Drumpf") had been deported and stripped of his Bavarian and German citizenship. He made a modest fortune in the 1890s building hotels and brothels during the Klondike Gold Rush.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, the Trumps kept a low profile as anti-German sentiment was running rife in the US at the time.

Donald’s grandfather died of the Spanish flu when his father, Fred, was 12 years old, leaving a fortune that his widow and son continued to invest in real estate.

Fred proved to be a shrewd, tough businessman, building and managing single-family houses, apartments for war workers during World War II, and more than 27,000 apartments in New York. He died of Alzheimer's disease in 1999 at the age of 93, leaving the Trump Organization in the hands of his son, Donald.

Donald had joined the family real estate conglomeration full-time in 1968 and took over the presidency from his father in 1971.

Companies, corporations, and conglomerates such as the Trump Organization are not and have never been conceived, established, or operated as democracies. Their owners or the appointed representatives of their owners (shareholders) exercise full authoritative, if not authoritarian, rule over their subordinates.

Donald Trump has been steeped in the authoritarian culture that had been inculcated in him by his ancestors and that he, himself, practised all his working life in the family real estate business. He is now 79 years old, and there is no way he will ever change. His character is cast in stone.

Since his election as president of the United States, Donald Trump has exercised authoritarian rule over his subordinates and is methodically deconstructing America’s democracy brick by brick.

.

Hi Banjo,

I thought the old Donald had a bit of the "German" in him, noticed that "fisty salute" he has developed? Reminiscent of another bloke and his salute of an earlier time.

BTW, when was America a democracy? I consider it a Capitalist oligarchy. Our "democracy" as is America's, is like riding a bicycle, it gives the impression that the rider can go anywhere he wants on his machine. Not true, the rider can't go backwards or sideward, only in one direction. Go in that one direction, and everyone is happy. Banjo your thoughts.

.

Dear Paul 1405,

.

Remember Churchill’s speech to the British House of Commons on 11 November 1947 :

« Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. »

Here is the speech :

http://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/nov/11/parliament-bill#:~:text=Many%20forms%20of,time%20to%20time

.

This non-American poster's obsession with Donald Trump is sad, to say the least; and the title of the post is nonsense.

Bonger, obviously you’ve never been to a circus. A theatre that brims with surreality, a place reserved for the seemingly impossible to be performed for the expectant audience.
Uncle Donald is a circus act in progress; but he’s not the only member of the troupe is he.

Think carefully on it, and you will realise over half of Americans are supportive of the Donald “Big Top”: Concluding from that reality, maybe Authoritarian can be successfully transposed to “Strong”, even “Chaotic” would be more deserving. A conjuror of a dream world from the seeds of a stark reality, too horrible to contemplate for poor mortal American man: A recognisable and fungible alternative to stark reality, created from the acrid fumes of social media as a sweet tasting panacea for the rejected deplorable of American society; nothing less than a God alternative, a theists God the Democrats murdered with Pagan contempt , expunging all traces of his wisdom and blessings by a true and authentic Authoritarianism.

When we have an official Australian defence organisation trumpeting about a ‘transgender’ person in our Navy (see below), it is quite clear that we have more than enough problems in our own country to worry about than the President of America, who rightly doesn't give a toss about what some wet, busybody, anonymous Australian thinks about him.

https://www.defence.gov.au/news-events/news/2025-05-19/navy-haven-strength-diversity