A newly surfaced report from a 1927 edition of the New York Times suggests Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s late father may have had a connection to the Ku Klux Klan.
A man named Fred Trump was among those arrested in a massive brawl between KKK members and police at a 1927 Memorial Day parade in New York City, according to a contemporaneous Times article surfaced Wednesday by the blog Boing Boing.
The Times article listed the arrestee’s address as 175-24 Devonshire Road in Jamaica Estates, Queens. Past local news reports noted that the Republican presidential frontrunner’s father (pictured above, third from the left) lived at that address. Donald Trump’s German immigrant grandfather, who anglicized his own name to Fred Trump, died nine years before the incident occurred.
While six other men arrested in the brawl faced charges, the Times report noted that Fred Trump was discharged. All seven of the men who were arrested were represented by the same team of two lawyers, according to the Times report.
The Times reported that police said the brawl broke out because the Klan reneged on an agreement not to wear any of their symbols to the parade. The Klan members, for their part, accused the police of exceeding their authority in trying to keep them out of the parade, according to the report.
The elder Trump was born in 1905, which would put him in his early ’20s when The New York Times covered the brawl. His wife, Mary Anne, didn’t give birth to the couple’s son Donald until 1946.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign did not immediately return Boing Boing’s request for comment. Similarly, the campaign did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment.
It’s unclear to what extent, if any, Fred Trump was involved with the group, based on the New York Times report. As the incident happened nearly 20 years before Donald Trump was born, it’s also unclear whether the real estate mogul knew anything of his father’s youthful arrest.
As TPM has reported, many self-styled white nationalists have voiced their support in recents weeks for Donald Trump, particularly his hardline immigration platform. Their support does not make Trump himself a white supremacist. The billionaire’s former adviser, Roger Stone, also told TPM in a recent interview that he would disavow the support of white supremacists.
Read the article from the June 1, 1927 edition of the New York Times below:
Image: Donald Trump, left, talks with his parents, Mary and Fred and his sister, U.S. District Court Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, at the opening of Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City, N.J., Thurs., April 5, 1990. (AP Photo)
Aw, who cares? Donald has enough baggage of his own to fill a boxcar. We do not need to drag in the foibles of ancestors.
Whatever. Let’s focus on Trump Jr. not Trump Sr. He is execrable enough.
Guess the acorn didn’t fall far from that tree…
1927??? FFS. This will clearly be the thing that derails the campaign.
No. No it won’t.
And focusing on something his father did 88 years ago is going to make the media look like scum.
Edited for grammar.
This revelation will not disappoint his supporters – it will encourage them.