Donald Trump Even Lies About Being Swedish

One demonstrable lie Donald Trump tells in The Art of the Deal is that his immigrant grandfather “came here from Sweden as a child.”

In truth, Frederich Trump arrived at Ellis Island from Germany, to be precise the small town of Kallstabt.

Frederich worked for a brief time as a barber in New York and then headed to Canada for the Klondike Gold Rush. There he ran what has been variously described as a restaurant and a whorehouse. He then returned with his fortune to Kallstadt, where he married a young woman named Elizabeth Christ who grew up across the street.

The bride in particular had no desire to leave their hometown. They might well have stayed there had German authorities not observed that Fredrick had departed the fatherland just before he was to have begun compulsory military service and returned just after he aged out.

Frederich became that very rare person who is deported from his own country. Elizabeth came along and is said to have been the most unhappy of immigrants as they arrived in New York, he for the second time.