Dynasty: the reason Trump believes he was born to rule

Ambition and ruthlessness are in the genes that make up the new US president, writes Joe Shute

When Donald Trump and his wife Melania had a son 10 years ago, he was introduced to the world with typical bombast. "He's strong, he's smart, he's tough, he's vicious, he's violent," Trump declared, holding baby Barron up at a media conference. "All of the ingredients you need to be an entrepreneur."

The subtext was clear: a new Trump is born, and the world had better watch out.

Dynasty means everything to the new US president. He possesses the same furious drive that enabled his grandfather to go from penniless immigrant to property developer, and his father to become one of the richest men in the US.

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His lack of moral qualms, his sense of self-worth and his caustic outbursts may confound political commentators. But it is through the prism of his family that the 45th president of the US can best be understood.

"The theme that runs through all the Trumps, no matter how much money they've made or how successful they've become, is this desire to always find the next opportunity," says British TV journalist Matt Frei, who has made a documentary focusing on Trump's family history.

Theirs, he says, is an "unforgiving" supercharged version of the American dream.

Frei's programme, like the new biography, Trump Revealed, written by Washington Post journalists Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, begins with his grandfather, Friedrich, who arrived in New York from Bavaria in 1885, aged 16 and with only a suitcase to his name.

After working as a barber in central Manhattan, he set up a hotel and drinking den at a Rockefeller mining concession in Seattle. From there, he followed the stampede of would-be prospectors heading to northwestern Canada in the Klondike gold rush, and started a restaurant selling burgers made out of the horses that had perished by the side of the road. When the meat ran out, he built a brothel.

"There were 3,000 miners who came to the Arctic Hotel every single day," Frei says. "And if they couldn't pay with money, they paid with gold dust."

His nest egg secured, Friedrich returned to settle in Bavaria, where he married Elizabeth, a girl from a poor neighbouring family. But the fact that he had dodged military service meant he was refused German citizenship. That prompted his return to New York to muscle in on the booming property market - and the course of history was changed.

Friedrich and Elizabeth had three children and by 1918 his property deals had made him $500,000 (about R6.7-million) in today's money. But at the age of 49, he was killed in the Spanish flu epidemic. The business was left to his wife and 12-year-old son, Fred (Donald's father).

block_quotes_start The difficulty I had with Donald is I thought there was a real emptiness inside him. And if you have no empathy you are fit, as Shakespeare would say, for stratagems and spoils block_quotes_end

Over the next 30 years, Fred grew the business to a net worth of more than $200-million. That success, however, was plagued by allegations of corruption as he exploited maximum profit out of government projects designed to lever the US out of the Great Depression, and provided cheap homes for veterans returning from World War 2, which some nicknamed "Trump's dumps on stumps".

It was into this fierce, hyper-capitalist world that Donald Trump arrived in 1946. He was the second son of five siblings, born to a Scottish immigrant, Mary Anne MacLeod, who had travelled to the US from the Isle of Lewis in 1930. Attractive, fierce and determined to better herself, Mary met Fred Trump at a dance when she was still employed as a domestic worker. They married in 1936.

Frei describes her transition from grinding poverty in the Outer Hebrides to New York socialite as akin to something from F Scott Fitzgerald. "She certainly was a striking beauty, but she had an inner confidence as well."

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Trump's mother was a matriarch and socialite who ran the household with an iron fist and swept out of the front door in fur coats with her hair a sculpted orange swirl (not unlike her son's today).

Donald says he inherited far more from his "smart as hell" mother than an intolerance of germs (he loathes handshakes, claiming to be "very much of a germaphobe").

In his 1997 book The Art of the Comeback, Trump says his admitted failure to connect with women (Melania is his third wife) is because he cannot help but compare them to "my incredible mother". Mary died in 2,000 at the age of 88.

His childhood home was a 23-room mansion designed like a faux Southern plantation.

School friends recall a sense of entitlement from a very young age, and anger when things didn't go Donald's way. At Kew Forest Primary School, he once (according to Trump Revealed) punched his music teacher in the face, giving him a black eye. Detentions were nicknamed DTs - or Donny Trumps.

Fred, who wore a suit at home and sported a clipped moustache, was a strict father and regarded Donald as something of a tearaway. After being caught with a collection of switchblade knives, he was sent to the New York Military Academy. Donald thrived in this austere black-and-white world. He won prizes for neatness and was the star on its baseball team.

He also received the school "Ladies' Man" award. Curiously, schoolmate Sandy McIntosh remembers, this was in part because Donald's parents would bring with them a different beautiful young woman each time they visited. They would then very obviously promenade together in the school quadrangle. According to McIntosh, this was a deliberate attempt to curate Donald's playboy image, having realised it could be an asset.

"The difficulty I had with Donald is I thought there was a real emptiness inside him," says McIntosh. "And if you have no empathy you are fit, as Shakespeare would say, for stratagems and spoils."

block_quotes_start When the Trump family was sued in 1973 by the New York housing authorities for discriminating against black and Hispanic tenants in their buildings, his lawyer Roy Cohn counter-sued for $100-million block_quotes_end

The eldest Trump son, Fred jnr, was eight years Donald's senior and the heir apparent. He was handsome, gregarious and had the easy charm his younger brother lacked.

His socialising, however, spiralled into the chronic alcoholism from which he died at 41. Trump has, in part, sought to define himself against his brother; not least his teetotalism and ferocity towards his enemies.

"He was a truly nice human being," Donald once said of Fred jnr. "And there's something very beautiful about that. Unfortunately, when you're growing up in New York City and dealing with some of the great sharks of world, especially in the real estate business, it's not very good."

But there is another man who some say played almost an equal role to Donald's father in shaping his character.

Trump met the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn when he was just 28 (and already chairman of his father's company).

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Cohn had a fearsome reputation as the representative of New York's biggest crime families.

Together, the pair terrorised the city. Of most lasting significance, Cohn taught Trump the art of the counter-attack - something he has deployed to devastating effect on his march to power.

When the Trump family was sued in 1973 by the New York housing authorities for discriminating against black and Hispanic tenants in their buildings, Cohn counter-sued for $100-million. Trump eventually declared a dubious victory, insisting that he didn't have to sign an admission of guilt.

Cohn also instilled in Donald Trump the notion it doesn't matter what is being written about you, as long as people are writing it. This persists today.

For all the mud slung, Trump - like his father and grandfather before him - bludgeons on.

"It's a philosophy of life that humanity is divided into winners and losers," Frei explains. "And Donald sees himself very much as the winning embodiment of the Trump gene."

- © The Sunday Telegraph, London