Donald Trump said his father gave him a small loan whereas Hillary Clinton said it was in the millions. Who was right? Was it a loan or not?
For those who missed the claims from the debate referenced in the question:Hillary Clinton: “He started his business with $14 million, borrowed from his father.”Donald Trump: “My father gave me a very small loan in 1975, and I built it into a company that’s worth many, many billions of dollars.”As far as who was right, Clinton is more correct here than Trump. She appears to be referring to a recent Wall Street Journal report about a 1985 casino-license document that showed Donald Trump owed his father and father’s businesses about $14 million.Trump joined his father’s thriving real estate business after college and that he relied on his father’s connections as he made his way in the real estate world.Trump also benefited from three trusts that had been set up for family members. In 1976, Fred Trump set up eight $1 million trusts, one each for his five children and three grandchildren, according to a casino document. (That today would be worth about $4 million in inflation-adjusted dollars.) The casino document lists several other loans from Trump’s father to his son, including a $7.5 million loan with at least a 12-percent interest rate that was still outstanding in 1981.In a 2007 deposition, Trump admitted he had borrowed “a small amount” from his father’s estate: ‘I think it was like in the $9 million range.” And as Trump’s casinos ran into trouble, Trump’s father also purchased $3.5 million gaming chips, but did not use them, so the casino would have enough cash to make payments on its mortgage — a transaction which casino authorities later said was an illegal loan.[1]Trump asserts that he built a real-estate fortune out of a “small” $1 million loan, a claim he made at a town hall appearance in 2015. That is simply not credible.Footnotes[1] N.j. Agency Says Trump Loan Illegal