If you are the last and perhaps only person in America to believe Donald Trump built his business empire without help from his father, the New York Times has a 14,000-word investigation to disabuse you.

If you thought his genius was for anything other than image management, the piece will doubly help you get up to speed.

Unfortunately, the most interesting revelation is one the Times buries—the astonishing degree to which father Fred Trump patiently financed and strategically connived in the creation of what the paper calls the “Donald Trump myth.” Think Joseph P. Kennedy. There’s even a parallel in the displacement of firstborn son Fred Jr. from his original slot as heir apparent.

In one way excruciatingly detailed by the Times, however, Mr. Trump and his sire are nothing new under the sun. Nobody in their right mind from the compulsive accumulator class pays the punitive federal estate tax. From an early age, such people make sure their lifetime achievements are not sucked up and splattered away in 15 seconds of federal spending. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, all apparently in the pink of health, have been working for years to shield their assets from the taxman. Sam Walton, the saintly founder of Walmart , in his autobiography advised: “The best way to reduce paying estate taxes is to give your assets away before they appreciate.”

Because politicians find it useful to appease both the envious and the wealthy, the IRS code features both an estate tax and ways to avoid it. A loophole the Times accuses the Trumps of using is a so-called grantor-retained annuity trust, described as “one of the tax code’s great gifts to the ultrawealthy.” Unsurprisingly, it also happens to be a favorite of the Sulzberger family, which owns the New York Times.