Trump keeps saying his father was born in Germany – he wasn't

Like any wise leader, Donald Trump knows bad news should always be followed with a compliment.

So perhaps that was why, in a recent interview in which he threatened to impose tariffs on European countries that did business with Iran and said the EU was “possibly as bad as China, just smaller”, the president added a touching personal detail.

It was one that spoke of his emotional attachment to the continent he was trashing.

“I was there many, many years ago,” he said. “Meaning, my parents were born in the European Union. I love these countries; Germany, Scotland, they are still in there right?”

Last week, as Trump has careened across Europe, he repeated his touching tale. In an interview recorded in Scotland, he said: “Don’t forget both of my parents were born in EU sectors – my mother was Scotland, my father was Germany.”

It was heartwarming stuff. It wasn’t true, but it was heartwarming.

Trump’s mother, Mary MacLeod, was indeed born in Scotland, on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. But his father, Fred Trump, was born in New York City, in the United States of America. Not Germany.

Fred Trump took over the family real estate business as a teenager and made vast sums before passing the reins to his son.

Fred Trump’s father, Friedrich Trump, was born in Germany, in the sleepy village of Kallstadt. He left for America at 16 and worked as a barber in Manhattan before heading west.

He lived in Washington state for a while and in the Yukon, in Canada, he sold horse meat and other “services” to goldminers.

Friedrich returned to Germany but was kicked out for skipping military service. His son barely left New York. Until the 1980s, though, he pretended he was of Swedish ancestry, which he felt would be more palatable to many of his Jewish tenants.

His son repeated the Swedish claim in his bestselling book, The Art of the Deal, then flirted with a run for the White House in 2000. His political ambitions were really fueled years later, though, by his leadership of the “birther” movement, which insisted Barack Obama was born in Kenya and thus could not be president.

That wasn’t true. Neither is it true that Trump’s own dad was born abroad.