During my first interview with Donald Trump in 2011, he opened up about the death of his brother to alcoholism. He also talks about how, as a father to his young children, he had a couple of absolutes that they must obey: no alcohol, no smoking, no drugs and no tattoos. Trump himself does not drink alcohol. I’m assuming he doesn’t have tattoos but I have no desire to find out (if you know what I mean). Watch his answer below.
MANDATORY COURTESY: CBN NEWS/THE BRODY FILE
ORIGINAL DATE: APRIL, 2011
Donald Trump: Well it was a defining moment. I had a great brother. I had two brothers, now I have one and two sisters, so a family of five. And I had a brother named Fred who was the most fabulous guy. The best-looking guy, the best personality, he loved life he loved people. He had everything going, but when he went to college for some reason he started drinking. That was before the drug age and before the other things, but drinking is essentially it’s all one big problem, but he drank, and smoked also, but he drank and he drank a lot and he started drinking more and more and he ultimately died of alcoholism. He was and he became a very serious alcoholic and it was amazing that he lived so long. He had an amazing body because to be taking that abuse with so much alcohol but he died quite some time ago at a fairly young age and it was a very defining moment. He was actually a great teacher because I tend to be pretty strong when I do something. I go in there and I do it right. And probably if I drank, I would have drank a lot. And Fred used to tell me, ‘don’t ever drink don’t ever smoke.’ He used to tell me that all the time. ‘Don’t ever drink’ and you know he was quite a bit older than me and he would say, ‘don’t ever drink and don’t ever ever ever smoke.’ Because he would smoke and he would drink but he wished he didn’t have to but it became an addiction that certainly the drinking and the smoking didn’t help but he smoked a lot and he drank a lot and at such a young age. I never drank and I’ve had many many friends and I’ve never smoked and I’ve had many many friends that frankly they developed the taste for alcohol. I’ve had one friend that went to the Wharton School of Finance and he kept telling me that he developed a taste for scotch and I’m working on it and today he’s an alcoholic. He used to say I hate the taste of it but I’m trying to get to like it. Well he got to like it alright and now he’s an alcoholic so I look at things like that and my brother was absolutely, to a certain extent a mentor because he used to really hit me hard when I was so much younger and he used to say to me ‘don’t ever drink don’t ever smoke.’ And what I do with my children and I have wonderful children and I hope they stay that way because you know life’s fragile but I have wonderful children and from the time they were old enough to listen to me and speak from a very young age I used to say ‘no drinking at all, no drugs no smoking’ and I used to say ‘no coffee.’ And now I add tattoos it would be nice if people didn’t get tattoos but what are you going to do? But no drinking no drugs no smoking to a point where my daughter Ivanka would say, ‘don’t say it anymore don’t say it anymore.’ But literally once a week I would say no and I think they got through that horrible stage of big drinking and drugs and even the smoking. So they don’t smoke they don’t take drugs and they don’t drink. I think, I hope.