FRONTLINE

>> "America Wants to Know!" >> Welcome to "America Wants to Know." I'm Ernie Anastas, and this is the... In 1992, I hosted a special show in New York where viewers asked a lot of questions about their favorite celebrities. Many, of course, were interested in Donald Trump, and what he was like as a young boy growing up in Queens. I managed to catch up with Donald's parents, Mary and Fred Trump, and asked them, "What was Donald's favorite game as a child?" >> He played Monopoly. Yes, indeed. >> He liked to play. >> He played with his brother. >> Uh-huh. >> He played with Robert, but more than Monopoly, he played with building blocks. >> Ooh. >> Always with building blocks. >>

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But Donald Trump's childhood was much more complicated. Early on, a family crisis, his mother seriously ill. >> When he was two-and-a-half, my grandmother got very ill. Donald, who was at a very, very critical point in his development as a child, was essentially abandoned by her. He may not entirely trust women. He finds it difficult, if not impossible, to connect with them on any deep level, because I don't believe he ever was able to with her. >> When you ask him about how she showed her love, he has nothing to say. The complexity of that relationship, I think, plays out through all of his relationships with women throughout his life. With one wife after another. There's a, an inability to reach any recognizable level of intimacy. >> Young

Donald had his own crisis

finding his place in a family dominated by his father, Fred, a stern and demanding real estate developer. >> I strongly suspect that he had a relationship with his father that accounts for a lot of what he became. And his father was a very brutal guy. He was a tough, hard-driving guy who had very, very little emotional intelligence, to use today's terms. >> Donald's father's overall message to his children was-- and it was a very different message to the boys than to the girls-- to the boys, was, "Compete, win, be a killer. Do what you have to to win." >>

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Inside the family,

a harsh game of apprentice

who would take over Fred's empire? The first in line wasn't Donald, it was his older brother Freddy. >> My father was sensitive, he was kind and generous, he liked hanging out with his friends who adored him, and, maybe worst of all, although it's hard to say, he had interests outside of the family business. My grandfather understood none of that. >>

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Their father said Freddy wasn't "a killer." He wanted to fly airplanes for a living. Donald thought that was crazy. >> He could not understand why Fred did not go into the family business and be a builder like their father was. But Fred wanted to be a pilot, and Donald looked at that and said, "Well, that's sort of like being a bus driver. Why would you want to be a pilot?" >> Donald watched as Freddy was cast out. >> My dad couldn't do anything right, and my grandfather made his life miserable. He was frustrated, and he began to realize that he, it wasn't going anywhere. >> His life ended early in alcoholism and poor health. Through the years, Donald would take a much different path. >> He wanted to avoid my father's fate of, you know, abuse and humiliation at the hands of his father. He took that lesson to heart. >> He was determined to live up to his father's ideal-- be "a killer." (trumpet fanfare plays) >> Ha! >> But he was also tempestuous, impulsive. And at 13, his father sent him to military school. (students chanting) >> He must have said, "This kid's going to grow up in a tough world, really tough world. If I want him to succeed, he's going to have to be tough." >> He talks about it as almost this rite of passage. He said to me that when he arrived at the military academy, for the first time in his life, someone slapped him in the face when he got out of line. >> It would be a five-year lesson in how to be a bully. >> Donald Trump yelled at his classmates. He pushed them around. He even used a broomstick as a weapon against classmates who didn't listen to him when he told them what to do. >> All of us were part of this culture of, you beat on kids when they didn't do the right thing. >> You got hit. You may have gotten slammed against the wall. You were put in, in... You got put artificially into fights. Uh... >> He became a leader of the cadets. He became one of the student leaders who had a number of kids under him in the dormitories, and he ruled the dormitory life with an iron fist. >> Inside that brutal world, Donald had found his place. >> His mother told me that he was never homesick. He loved it. He loved all that stuff because it was also really competitive. Other kids didn't really like him all that much. He wasn't that popular because he was so competitive. He was always looking for the edge. But it was, it was an environment that he thrived in. >> With his father and mother by his side, Donald graduated. He'd become a killer, learned the power of bullying to get

ahead

a method he'd carry into the future. (military students chanting)