The Daily - An Ongoing Look Into the Origins of Trump’s Wealth

This week, “The Daily” is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened since the stories first ran. Today, we return to a New York Times investigation into Fred and Donald Trump’s taxes. After spending much of the past year poring over never-before-seen documents, our colleagues unearthed new information about the president’s financial history that contradict his story of being a self-made billionaire. Guests: David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, investigative reporters for The Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Duration: 34m
Broadcast on: 31 Dec 2018
Audio Format: other

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brought to you by the Capital One Saver Card. With Saver, you are an unlimited 3% cashback on dining, entertainment, and at grocery stores. That's unlimited cashback on ordering takeout from home, or unlimited cashback on tickets to concerts and games. So grab a bite, grab a seat, and earn unlimited 3% cashback with the Saver Card. Capital One. What's in your wallet, terms apply, see CapitalOne.com for details. Hey, it's Michael. This week, we're revisiting our favorite episodes of the year. Listening back, and then hearing what's happened in the time since they first ran. Today, we return to an investigation into Fred and Donald Trump's taxes. You have to swear I don't think you're glad before you're allowed in, so... Okay. It has not been cleaned since we took it over. Can you just kind of walk me through the piles a little bit? These are thousands of property records, deeds, and mortgages, and transfers on every property ever owned going back for 16 years. There you've got all these buildings here. There's the house that you owned. And this is an aerial photograph of one of the buildings I assume. Right. Let's go. And then there's bank statements, tax returns, detailed accounting records where we can follow where the money's going.

Okay, so I know this has been a sprawling, complicated investigation, but I wonder if you could just boil it down for me. What is the big question that you have been trying to answer? For all of us, the question always comes back to, what's the actual ground truth about Donald J. Trump and how he got rich? My father gave me great knowledge. Didn't give me a lot. The famous go-to talking point that Donald Trump says, I started with a million dollar loan. I built a company that's worth more than 10 billion dollars, okay? Is that his father loaned him a million dollars? It's not been easy for me. It is not been easy for me. And that he parlayed that million dollar loan into this 10 billion dollar empire. My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars, and I had to pay him back, and I had to pay him back with interest. This idea that he's a self-made guy. I built this empire, and I get it by myself. And when you turn over the rock on that, nobody did it for me. It's just wholly untrue. But there's more to the story than just Donald Trump got more from his father than is previously known. Yeah, from the documents we've gathered, we were able to unearth the tales about Donald Trump's wealth, that he has worked very hard for a very long time to keep hidden. My colleagues, Russ Buehner, Sue Craig, and David Barstow have spent much of the past year locked in a room,

Transcription truncated.