TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP BUSINESS/TRUMP FAMILY: “You probably think you know who Donald Trump is. Most Americans do. For decades, he’s been in the public eye—first as a flamboyant real estate developer, then a reality TV star, then a political performer—and has been branding himself upon the public imagination throughout that entire time. Who is Donald Trump? Ask Americans and many of them will describe a self-made billionaire, a business tycoon of unfathomable success. In research recently published in Political Behavior, we found that voters are not simply uninformed about President Trump’s biographical background, but misinformed—and that misinformation has serious political consequences. Large swaths of the public believe the Trump myth. Across three surveys of eligible voters from 2016 to 2018, we found that as many as half of all Americans do not know that he was born into a very wealthy family. And while Americans are divided along party lines in their assessment of Trump’s performance as president, misperceptions regarding his financial background are found among Democrats and Republicans. The narrative of Trump as self-made is simply false. Throughout his life, the president has downplayed the role his father, real estate developer Fred Trump, played in his success, claiming it was “limited to a small loan of $1 million.” That isn’t true, of course: A comprehensive New York Times investigation last year estimated that over the course of his lifetime, the younger Trump received more than $413 million in today’s dollars from his father.”
–Jared McDonald, David Karol and Lilliana Mason, “Many Voters Think Trump’s a Self-Made Man. What Happens When You Tell Them Otherwise?,” Politico, January 17, 2019