TRUMP

42 ANATOMY OF A MONSTROSITY
(A violation of gaming commission rules that later led to Trump being
fined. 125 ) O’Brien says Trump “inherited, probably conservatively,
over $150 million from Fred.” 126
In the early years of Donald Trump’s involvement with his father’s
empire, the Trump family’s rental practices became notorious. Trump’s
father Fred even became the subject of a short poem by the folk singer
Woody Guthrie, who rented from Fred, Sr. and condemned “Old
Man Trump” for “stirring up” “racial hate” and “draw[ing] that color
line here at his Beach Haven family project.” “Beach Haven is Trump’s
Tower/Where no black folks come to roam,” Guthrie wrote. 127 Indeed,
the racial renting practices of the Trump family quickly attracted
the scrutiny of the federal government, and Richard Nixon’s Justice
Department built a case that the Trumps were deliberately excluding
blacks from their units. As Nicholas Kristof reports:
Blacks were repeatedly dispatched as testers to Trump
apartment buildings to inquire about vacancies, and
white testers were sent soon after. Repeatedly, the black person
was told that nothing was available, while the white
tester was shown apartments for immediate rental. 128
A former building superintendent said that “he was told to code any
application by a black person with the letter C, for colored, apparently
so the office would know to reject it,” 129 and the government compiled
“overwhelming evidence that the company had a policy of discriminating
against blacks.” 130 Eventually, the Trumps were forced to settle
and change their policies.
Donald was a notorious enough landlord in his own right. He
“complained about having to rent properties to welfare recipients,” 131
and was ruthless in trying to get rid of rent-controlled tenants. When
Trump took over 100 Central Park South, a building he intended to
demolish in order to build new luxury condos, he waged a ruthless