He's not even a self-made millionaire. But millions of Americans still think he is. And it affects their willingness to vote for him:
Who is Donald Trump? Ask Americans and many of them will describe a self-made billionaire, a business tycoon of unfathomable success. In research recently published in Political Behavior, we found that voters are not simply uninformed about President Trump’s biographical background, but misinformed—and that misinformation has serious political consequences.
Large swaths of the public believe the Trump myth. Across three surveys of eligible voters from 2016 to 2018, we found that as many as half of all Americans do not know that he was born into a very wealthy family. And while Americans are divided along party lines in their assessment of Trump’s performance as president, misperceptions regarding his financial background are found among Democrats and Republicans.
Incomprehensible as it might be to political news junkies, nearly half of Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, don't know that Donald Trump was born into a very wealthy family. They believe the myth that Trump has pushed, that’s he’s a self-made man.
The truth is that his father, Fred Trump, who made his fortune as a real estate developer, set up his son Donald for success in the same business. Donald inherited $413 million in today’s dollars from his father. His father co-signed his business loans. Donald was a millionaire before he got out of diapers. And his father kept bailing him out with more millions each time one of his poorly conceived business ventures failed.
So what, you say?
Using a 2017 University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll, we found that believing Trump was not born “very wealthy” leads to at least a 5-percentage-point boost in the president’s job approval, even after considering the many factors that can influence public approval ratings. This shift is rooted in the belief that his humble roots make Trump both more empathetic (he “feels my pain”), and more skilled at business (he is self-made and couldn’t have climbed to such heights without real business know-how).
And what happens when people who thought Trump was a self-made man learn the truth? Their views become less positive toward him:
For Democrats, who already see Trump as lacking empathy, this information makes them think of him as even less empathetic. But among Republicans, the information is even more damning, reducing perceptions of empathy by more than 10 percentage points...
On perceptions of business acumen, which are higher across both parties, the information regarding Fred Trump’s role in his son’s business success is equally important. Democrats reduce their perceptions of Trump as a good businessman by 6 points, while Republican perceptions decline by 9 points.
So here's something to keep in mind when dealing with a Trump supporter. Make sure they know he was born rich and that whatever wealth he has now wasn't the result of his "great deal making" or any kind of super business acumen on his part. He was given all the advantages in the world by his very wealthy father and fed money by him over and over again each time his business ventures failed.
Maybe all those handouts from his father spoiled any native business skill young Donald might have had until he'd burned all his bridges and couldn't borrow money from anyone anymore… and he had to turn to the Russians as the only ones still willing to keep giving him money.
He's not a self-made man who did good for himself. He's a Richie Rich who had everything given to him on a silver platter, and he still made bad.