Responding to questions about the New York Times investigation detailing the Trump family finances and accusing President Donald Trump of tax fraud, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the report a “very boring 14,000-word story.” | Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images White House White House's takeaway from bombshell NYT report: Fred Trump had confidence in his son

The White House said on Wednesday that the bombshell New York Times report on the Trump family and taxes got one thing right: President Donald Trump’s father believed in his son.

Responding to questions about the investigation detailing the Trump family finances and accusing Trump of tax fraud, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the report a “very boring 14,000-word story.” But she also said it highlighted how much Fred Trump admired his son.


“In fact, the president brought his father into a lot of deals, and they made a lot of money together, so much so that his father went on to say that everything he touched turned to gold,” Sanders said during a press briefing Wednesday.

The Times reported Tuesday that Fred Trump created a web of financial security and lent his son more than $60 million — or roughly $140 million in today’s dollars — much of which Donald Trump never paid back. The report also alleged the Trump family used a byzantine tax evasion scheme to pass millions of dollars down from Fred Trump to his children while avoiding a 55 percent inheritance tax. The story came as a sharp contrast to Trump’s constant assertion of being a pioneering, self-made billionaire who made it from the junior varsity real estate of the outer boroughs to midtown Manhattan.

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The Times story also dove into the president’s personal relationship with his father, which included a partnered scheme to manufacture Donald Trump, the brand — a billionaire playboy who was the master of New York real estate. It also looked into the heaps of cash passed on to Donald Trump as a child, suggesting Fred Trump had made his selection for his heir.

Trump’s relationship with his father has been scrutinized in the past, as reporters and other observers have hoped to peek into the presidential id. Trump wrote in his book “The Art of the Deal” that his father never intimidated him “the way most people were” intimidated by their fathers, and he portrayed their relationship as a business dream team.

In his father’s obituary, Trump wrote that it was “good for me” that his father never expanded into Manhattan, adding: “You know, being the son of somebody, it could have been competition to me. This way, I got Manhattan all to myself!”

The story also explored seedier parts of their relationship, including a supposed competitive spirit Donald Trump had to curry his father’s favor over his brother, the meeker Fred Trump Jr. Even more damning, the Times reported Trump attempted to sweep into his father’s will as the sole executor of his estate before Fred Trump’s death. The senior Trump spurned the effort, allegedly fearing his fortune would become a bailout for his son’s financial tribulations, and instead orchestrated a complex scheme to pass down the money while avoiding inheritance taxes.

The White House has repeatedly denied the Times report. Aside from her singular concession on Trump’s father, Sanders during Wednesday’s briefing called it “a totally false attack based on an old recycled news story.”