One thing about Trump that I have never seen any commentator point out is that while Trump is a billionaire, he does not originate from the traditional Anglo-Saxon American elite. Trump originates from a German immigrant family, and Germans and the Irish were the original “immigrant undesirables” in the US like Southern and Eastern Europeans or Chinese during a later generation, or Central Americans and Middle Easterners today.
Benjamin Franklin once remarked that Germans were not qualified to be good Americans, although German-Americans are now the single-largest ethnic group in the US (“The Great Replacement,” lol). German and Irish gangs in large US cities in the early to middle 19th century were the equivalent of black and Hispanic gangs today. Trump’s family history is similar to that of those of poor and/or middle-class persons/families from lower strata Anglo-Protestant or ethnic minority/immigrant backgrounds that eventually become rich, but are still not considered part of the formal elite (see Paul Fussell’s study of class in America).
In spite of his billions, Trump has always seemed to me to be more “white trash” than a patrician. If his niece’s book is at all truthful, it would seem that I was right. The Trumps are what you get what you put billions in the hands of rednecks.
