President Donald Trump mixed up where his own father was born during an Oval Office photo op with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
The 79-year-old said his father was born in Germany as he fielded questions from reporters on his unauthorized war with Iran.
“My father was born,” Trump said while gesturing towards Merz. “He knows all about my father. My father was born there.”
“So, you know, there are places that you sort of automatically very, very feel warmly about,” Trump added.
In fact, the president’s father, Frederick Trump Jr., was born in the Bronx in New York City in 1905. It was his father’s parents — Trump’s grandparents — who were born in what was then the German Empire, specifically in the Kingdom of Bavaria.
The president has repeatedly made the easily debunked claim his that father was born in Germany. In 2018, he told CBS News his father was born in Germany, and repeated it to Fox News in 2020.
“My father is German, was German, born in a very wonderful place in Germany,” Trump claimed in 2019.
Trump’s paternal grandfather, Frederick Trump, born Friedrich Trump, immigrated to the United States, arriving in New York City at age 16 in 1885.
When he immigrated to the U.S., Frederick Trump escaped Germany’s mandatory military service. His grandson, Donald Trump, would later also evade military service by claiming he had bone spurs in his heels.
Frederick Trump worked as a barber for his first six years in the U.S., before moving to Seattle. In Washington, he went on to open a restaurant that was known as “a hotbed of sex, booze, and money, was the indisputable center of the action in Seattle.”
Frederick Trump moved back to Germany in 1901, where he met and married his wife, Elisabeth Christ Trump, the president’s paternal grandmother. The couple came back to New York in June 1904, however, after German authorities found out he had dodged his compulsory military service. He was stripped of his German citizenship as a result.
Their son Fred Jr. was born in October, instantly an American thanks to the birthright citizenship which the president wants to abolish, but speaking German as his first language. The president’s grandfather died on Memorial Day 1918 in the Spanish influenza epidemic.
Despite the president’s recent assertions that his father was born in Germany, both he and his father had previously denied their German ancestry altogether.
“[He] came here from Sweden as a child,” Trump wrote of his grandfather in his book The Art of the Deal.
Even as Trump mixed up his father’s birthplace on Tuesday, he did correctly remember what country his mother, Mary Anne Trump, was born in, as he complained that the United Kingdom was not giving its full-throated support for his war in Iran.
“This is not the age of Churchill. I will say the U.K. has been, very very, uncooperative,” he complained.
“And they ruin relationships. It’s a shame. And that country, U.K., and I love that country. I love it,” he said, adding, “My mother was born there. I love. My mother, was born there.”
Mary Anne McLeod was an immigrant from Scotland who spoke English as a second language, and came to the U.S. to be a household service; she did not have an advanced education.
The White House did not respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
In addition to his confusion about his family history, Trump, the oldest president ever elected, has in recent months expressed confusion about several items, including which countries he wants to invade, which wars he claims to have “solved,” and when exactly he has served as president.
His niece, Mary Trump, has made the case to The Daily Beast that Trump is suffering from dementia, just like his father did.
“There are times I look at him and I see my grandfather,” Mary told the Daily Beast’s Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles in November. “I see that same look of confusion. I see that he does not always seem to be oriented to time and place. His short-term memory seems to be deteriorating.”
