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Mary Trump
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Mary Trump
Donald Trump's Niece
Mary Trump is the niece of Donald Trump and the author of Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Gabrielle Schonder on July 30, 2020. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Trump’s Early Childhood
If I can put you in the time machine to go back to Queens for a moment, I’d love to maybe go back there.So really general, can you help me understand and can you set up your grandmother and your grandfather?What were they like?If you could describe their outlook on life—I’d love your take on that.
In some ways, they were very traditional Americans in their position and in their time.You know, my grandmother was an immigrant from Scotland.My grandfather was a first-generation American.Both of his parents were from Germany; he grew up speaking German.And yet the goal was to assimilate, so they retained very little of the cultures they hailed from.And, you know, my grandmother actually also grew up speaking Gaelic, but none of their children learned either of the languages their parents grew up speaking.
They were also quite traditional in terms of gender roles.But it was even more extreme in my family than I think it typically was.So, for example, my grandfather was the breadwinner and my grandmother ran the household, but my grandfather was in charge of everything.But it also—there was this real sense that the girls were of no interest to him, and my grandmother had little to nothing to do with the boys.And that—that was a pretty extreme way to approach child rearing.And I think you could see it in the way her relationship with her sons played out over time.
That brings me to a question I had, which is, at least with your uncle Donald, that there was a distance between Mary and him.Can you help me understand that?
Yeah.It started very early in his life.When he was two and a half, my grandmother got very ill.She was found passed out in the bathroom, and she was bleeding profusely.And after they rushed her to the hospital, they realized that she had had some undiagnosed postpartum issues from the birth of my uncle Rob nine months earlier, and for about a year she was in and out of the hospital.At first they didn’t think she was going to survive at all.
So essentially, for that period of time, Donald, who was at a very, very critical point in his development as a child, was essentially abandoned by her.Obviously it wasn’t her fault, but he—she was his only real human connection.You know, she was his primary caregiver, the main source of love and affection and soothing, and he was suddenly without her.
My grandfather was certainly incapable of filling the void.And not only did he not fill the void, he was a very—he was very impatient with children; he had no use for them.So Donald probably experienced my grandfather’s failures to step up as something to be afraid of.You know, like wanting something, needing something that my grandfather was either unwilling or [un]able to provide for you would basically be met with derision by my grandfather.So that was bad enough.
When my grandmother got better, to the extent that she did, for reasons I don’t completely understand, and it may simply be because of that divide, that gender divide in the family, it may be because she didn’t really recover as well as people might have thought.You know, there was certainly physical issues that she continued to have—osteoporosis, etc.—butI think there was a real psychological amount of damage that she suffered that—so for those reasons, she just wasn’t able to heal the rifts that had occurred between her and Donald.And, you know, he never trusted her quite.
And I think the final betrayal was when, at the age of 13, they wanted to send him away to the military academy, which, you know, my aunts refer to as a reform school, and my grandmother did absolutely nothing to prevent that from happening.
That’s fascinating, I hadn’t heard that before, that he resented her for not protecting him from being sent off.
Yeah. And, you know, obviously I wasn’t there, but when I was old enough to notice these things, there was a distance between all of her sons and my grandmother.There was a sort of condescension and infantilization.And I think part of that was the times, you know, the ’50s, ’60s, and part of it was that she responded well to that sort of thing.But to me, it spoke to a distance in their relationship and, you know, the fact that they didn’t particularly respect her and that there wasn’t a closeness between them.I don’t believe any of her sons ever confided in her or ever went to her if they needed help with anything.
I’ve noticed that your uncle doesn’t keep a photo of his mom in the Oval in the way that he certainly does with your grandfather.
Yeah.When we were at the White House in April of 2017 for my aunt’s birthday party, we were in the Oval Office, and Donald said—the only thing behind the desk that—the only photograph behind the desk—there might have been some challenge coins or something—was this old picture of my grandfather that used to be in the library of my grandparents’ house.And Donald said: “Hey, look at this picture of Dad.Isn’t that great?”And we’d seen it like a million times.So, “Yeah, it’s great, Donald.”And Maryanne says, with her very dry delivery, “Maybe you should have a picture of Mom.”And he’s like: “Yeah, that’s a great idea!Somebody get me a picture of Mom.”So clearly he didn’t have one, you know.
So there actually is now a picture of my grandmother, but it’s a really old one. …
How do you think his relationship with her impacts the relationships he goes on to have with women?
Well, some of it is the relationship he had with her, and some of it is the misogyny in the family.So I think that because of his relationship with her, he may not entirely trust women.He finds it difficult, if not impossible, to connect with them on any deep level because I don’t believe he ever was able to with her, at least, you know, after he was two and a half. …So he has a way now of objectifying women.And again, I don’t know that he has ever had a deep, meaningful, romantic or intellectual connection with a woman.
The School of Fred Trump
I‘ll ask you a little bit later about more of that, but let’s switch to your grandfather for a moment.I mean, what you’ve described, though, is a pretty rigid guy—a rigid figure, and certainly in his children’s life is a guy who’s got an outlook that he’s trying to instill in them which is, there are winners, there are losers, there are killers.Can you give me sort of the School of Fred Trump sort of summary?
Yeah, you sure?Yeah, it’s not very fun.Although honestly, if you met my grandfather, he was a quite cheerful person.You know, he wasn’t this grim, dark figure lurking around.He seemed fairly lighthearted.But he was in control of everything, so, you know, that helps, I guess.
But there were two main outlooks that he had that determined how his children were going to— well, I guess his sons mostly, and certainly mostly my dad and Donald.The first was, as you said, winners/losers.Life is a zero-sum game.There’s one winner.Everybody else is a loser.If you’re not winning, you’re losing.Unfortunately, he didn’t just have that philosophy in the context of his business; he ran his family that way.And Donald learned early on, in part because my grandfather was not simpleminded, exactly, but he just hit on the same things over and over again, so it was very difficult to avoid getting his message.
But also, Donald had the benefit of being seven and a half years younger than my dad, so he was able to watch what my grandfather considered the mistakes that my dad made, and Donald, in part because he was characterologically suited to being my grandfather’s son, but also because he wanted to avoid my father’s fate of, you know, abuse and humiliation at the hands of his father, he took that lesson to heart and became—and did everything in his power to become the killer, the tough guy, the person who would do anything in his power to be the winner, the person who would never be wrong, could never be wrong, could never admit a mistake, and avoided being kind because all of those things, in my grandfather’s universe, spoke to an unforgivable weakness.
The second, and in some ways maybe even more debilitating philosophy my grandfather had was the power of positive thinking, which—I don’t think he learned it from Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote that awful book, but it perfectly fit in with what my grandfather already thought, right?Everything’s great, you know, and if you think that way, then everything will be great.The problem is, everything is not always great.Most human beings have a fairly wide range of emotions and experiences.
So it’s very dangerous when the person who’s essentially in control of your life disallows any feelings that he either doesn’t value or that make him uncomfortable.For example, my grandmother, as I mentioned, had osteoporosis, was frequently in the hospital with broken bones and would be brought home to do rehab, and she’d be in a hospital bed in the library, in pain.And my grandfather would come in the room and he’d say, “Everything’s great, right, toots?”And it wasn’t a question; it was sort of a command.And no matter what, she would just grit her teeth, blink back her tears and say, “Yes, Fred,” you know, even though nothing was great.
So what he ended up—what my grandfather ended up doing is making it impossible to experience or at least allow yourself to feel certain things, to ever to be sad or depressed or less than perfect.And the reason I think that that might actually have more of an impact on what’s happening to us now is because we see how that continues to inform Donald’s way of approaching the world, you know: Everything’s great; he’s always right; nothing’s ever bad.And it’s this toxic positivity that completely elides this entire realm of human experience and emotion, but that also puts up a barrier to facing things that need to be faced, if they are counter to his preferred narrative.
You couldn’t possibly be talking about COVID—
What makes you think that?
—and bad news, you know?But it’s certainly a line that we draw from Norman Vincent Peale and the idea of “Imagine the world you want, the problems that you can cast away.”It’s fascinating to hear you say, though, that it’s really something he’s adopting from Dad.
Yeah, and it’s—you know, when I started working on the book, one of the things that most fascinated me was all of the throughlines that run from my grandparents’ house to the Oval Office, uninterrupted.It’s quite incredible, and a little unnerving, I have to say.But yeah, that’s—we find ourselves in the situation we’re in right now because when COVID first was recognized as being a potential threat, that could not be acknowledged because it was bad; it was a bad thing, and you don’t want to spook the stock market.So of course we did—he did nothing, and it became more and more of an issue that had to be addressed.But to address it properly would mean acknowledging a mistake had been made.Like, course correcting would have been admitting that he’d been wrong from the very beginning.So what happens?We deny it.“It’s going to disappear. It’s not that big a deal.You don’t have to wear a mask.”
So at a time when he could so easily have been a hero to people who already despised him, right, by getting a hold of this, getting ahead of it… He’s continuing to say: “It’s under control.It’s going away.It’s going to be fine.”And if he’s shifting his tone a little bit, it’s simply because, if that’s what he needs to do to get reelected, that’s what he’s going to do.It doesn’t mean that he has any deep convictions about it one way or the other.
Let me ask you really briefly, did you ever go to church?Did you ever go to the Marble Collegiate with them?Do you have any memories of that?
Yeah.You know, church was not something we did frequently.It was more of an occasion thing, you know, weddings.I think everybody—I think everybody except my parents was married at Marble Collegiate Church....So other than that, though, I, you know, we weren’t churchgoers.They weren’t churchgoers.
Let me go back to the time machine for a moment.You were describing, though, some of these kinder, empathetic traits that your dad had that were declared as weaknesses by his father.And I wonder if you can help me, around this time period, understand where your dad and Donald sort of fell in the pecking order of the family, because early on, Donald is not the favorite son.Your dad is early.Can you help us understand how that shift sort of beings to happen, but early, what Donald was seeing in your dad?
My dad was the favorite initially simply because he was the first.He was the namesake and the heir apparent, right?So in a really weird way, despite the fact that my grandfather had no use for children in general, he had a use for my father.So my dad early on was protected in a way Donald wasn’t, because he mattered to my grandfather as an extension of his ambitions.
As my father grew older, and his personality became clear, came into focus that he was sensitive, he was kind and generous, he liked hanging out with his friends who adored him, and, maybe worst of all, although it’s hard to say, he had interests outside of the family business—like, this is a guy who, you know, liked to go to parties and he liked to fly and he liked to be on boats and go water skiing and fishing—my grandfather understood none of that.
So it, I mean, it probably wasn’t until Donald was in high school that my grandfather started turning his attention away from my dad to Donald.I mean, the plan was still for my father to work for Trump Management out of college and, you know, be the right-hand man.But my grandfather already had his suspicions that it might not work out.I don’t believe he ever really liked my dad, and it became clear fairly quickly that he didn’t respect him.
What’s very interesting about how that shift occurred with—between my dad and Donald is that the ways in which Donald suffered as a very young child, the ways in which my grandfather ignored him, wasn’t there for him, made him feel lonely and afraid, led to these defense mechanisms that Donald had to develop in order to protect himself from that loneliness and fear, right, which then made him the kind of person my grandfather could make use of, you know, a bully, somebody who was completely indifferent to what other people thought about him—that’s not true anymore, actually, but it was true back then—somebody who was willing to do whatever it took to be the best.
And, you know, Donald also took it a step further, also probably out of fear.He became—he wasn’t just better than everybody; he was the best.He was always winning.And then he was much better than my grandfather at, you know, manipulating the media eventually, you know, and presenting himself with this hyperbolic self-regard that even my grandfather couldn’t have imagined.
Trump in the Military Academy
Let me ask you about the transformation that happens at New York Military Academy and the decision to send him away.Do you think your grandfather was trying to clean him up, was trying to prepare Donald, was trying to straighten him out to take on this role of being heir apparent?
No.
Okay. Tell me your theory on New York Military Academy, why he goes.
Well, I think it was just a nuisance for my grandfather, you know.He was on the board at the school Donald attended in Forest Hills, and Donald was getting into trouble all the time; his behavior was escalating.It went from just bullying, like name calling, to physical confrontations.And you know, it was—I don’t know if embarrassing is the right word because I don’t think my grandfather was capable of embarrassment, but it was—it was an inconvenience that he probably didn’t want to deal with.So when the idea of New York Military Academy was raised, he was probably like, “Fine,” because, you know, it’s not like he was—he wasn’t home that much, so my grandmother certainly got more of the brunt of Donald’s misbehavior in the house, but I think initially just my grandfather didn’t care.You know, if this is causing problems, then fine, go send him away.It wasn’t about straightening him out or toughening him up, you know.He was already pretty, at least as my grandfather saw it, he was already tough in the way my grandfather wanted him to be.
He does visit him quite frequently.What do you think that’s about?
You know, I’ve thought about that, because my grandfather lost his father at a—he was the same age when he lost his father that Donald was when he got sent away to school.So I’ve wondered, even though it seems counterintuitive given the kind of person my grandfather was, but I’ve wondered if maybe he felt some kind of not sympathy exactly, but he identified maybe in some way with how Donald probably felt, you know, cast off.
But over time, I think it’s because they started developing a real rapport and understanding, and my grandfather finally started to see in him the son he wanted.
Fred Trump, Jr.
What made your dad, do you think, reject the family business?
My grandfather didn’t give him a choice.You know, I hear people say that my dad didn’t want to do it.I’ve heard Donald say that he wasn’t good at it.But first of all, there’s no evidence that my dad wasn’t good at real estate, just as there’s no evidence that Donald was good at real estate.So when my dad graduated from college, he had his personal and professional pilot’s licenses, but he was still going to Trump Management, and he was totally dedicated to that idea.Unfortunately, however, my grandfather, over the next three years, treated him so poorly, with such little respect, particularly around people who someday were going to be my dad’s employees—he also never delegated any responsibility—so, you know, my dad—and my dad couldn’t do anything right, first of all, but he wasn’t given any responsibility, so he was bored.And my grandfather made his life miserable.He was frustrated, and he began to realize that it wasn’t going anywhere.
So he made the decision then to apply to airlines to become a pilot, because after an eight-year moratorium, airlines were hiring again with the introduction of the first jets, the 707.He got accepted by TWA on his first try, let my grandfather know, which was probably one of the hardest things my father ever had to do, and then embarked on his career with TWA.
Going to fast-forward.Donald graduates from college and is promoted ahead of your dad, and it seems like a completely humiliating event, and I wonder if you can help me understand how your dad felt about that.
It was the last straw.I don’t think he actually ever, you know, after Steeplechase, which was the last big development my grandfather tried to pull off, and it was certainly the last big deal my father was involved in, after it ended badly and my grandfather blamed my dad for it—which was nonsense, but my grandfather never took responsibility for anything that was bad—it’s not like he had any illusions, but the promotion of Donald to president of Trump Management when Donald was 24, and my dad had been working there for 11 years, I think it gutted him, and he realized that he had no future there but was still stuck there until, you know, he just couldn’t do it anymore, and he left.But he didn’t leave to anything, you know.He had some weird odd jobs and stuff, but he certainly never had a career again.
What do you think it taught Donald?
I think it taught Donald that there was nothing he could do wrong, that he deserved everything that was thrown at him, because it wasn’t just the position.My grandfather just shoveled so much money his way that he didn’t earn and that, you know, certainly wasn’t available to any of his other siblings, that there was every reason for Donald to feel like he could do whatever he wanted.It’s very similar to what we’re living through now, you know.When there are no consequences for your actions, when you’re rewarded for either doing nothing or failing, of course you’re going to think highly of yourself, even though it’s, you know, completely separate from the reality of the situation. …
Trump’s Wedding to Ivana
I am curious, though, just going back to the church for a moment, were you at Donald and Ivana’s wedding?Do you remember that?
I do.I remember it really clearly because for two weeks before that, I’d been down in West Palm Beach visiting my dad, who had moved there a couple years after he stopped working for my grandfather.You know, he moved down there to try to start over and pick up the pieces.And unfortunately it didn’t work.But he seemed to be doing OK at the time, but he wasn’t invited to the wedding.So, you know, a lie has been told by them that my dad was supposed to be Donald’s best man and master of ceremonies, but he had to stay in Florida to take care of my—one of my uncles, my grandmother’s sister’s husband, who was ill.But that was a fabrication.
So anyway, we went back to New York.Not my dad.My brother and I went back to New York I guess the day before the wedding.And I came home to the news that my cat had died.So I remember the wedding because I spent the entire time sobbing hysterically because my cat had died.And, you know, it was my first death, and I was devastated.
But it was a very weird—that aside, it was a really weird wedding.Somebody had forgotten to order flowers.And the reception was at the 21 Club, which, I don’t know, it seems to me like an odd place to have a wedding reception.It’s very clubby and dark.But it was, you know, very par for the course for my family.
What does that mean?
Just no real attention to aesthetics or intimacy or, you know, that kind of thing.
Do you remember your dad around this time period talking about your uncle, what he was seeing, how he processed?
He didn’t talk about him that much, simply, I think, because my grandfather shoved Donald’s “success” in my dad’s face a lot, and I think he found that difficult.And I, you know, I don’t think my father took Donald very seriously.He certainly never—you know, he never saw him as competition or that they were fighting over the same resources.He was so much older and also just not that kind of person.But certainly by the time he moved back to New York, which would have been I guess a year after Donald and Ivana married—he moved back because he had had open heart surgery when he was 39, and he was very ill, so he moved back into my grandparents’ house, and I think by then, my dad had just bought in, hook, line and sinker, into the family’s—the family’s assessment of my father as an alcoholic failure who’d never accomplished anything and their line about Donald as this extraordinary, self-made, brilliant businessman.
Trump’s Worldview
You were just talking about the line that’s been developed about Donald, so I wonder if you can help me understand the worldview that’s been instilled in Donald by Fred around this same time period.
By then, my grandfather was all in, you know.And the myths that he created about his second son were becoming more and more real to both of them.And, you know, because my grandfather knew that he financed Donald.The Grand Hyatt happened and Trump Tower happened because of my grandfather’s money, connections, influence and political donations that he’d made over the years.He was very, very deeply in the Brooklyn Democratic machine and New York politics, both at the state and local levels.
… I think in order to survive, Donald had to believe that that myth was true, that it was him; it was all him.And it wasn’t until I think Atlantic City that my grandfather finally understood that maybe—yes, he was financing Donald, but that maybe Donald wasn’t so good at anything.And at that point, Donald’s success had always, in my grandfather’s view, been a reflection on him, and that’s why it was so important to him, you know.It sort of burnished in his own mind his incredible abilities as a master builder.
But when faced with the debacle that was Atlantic City, even my grandfather must have started to see that the myth was actually a myth.But he was so tied up in it, he needed to keep perpetuating it, which of course allowed Donald to keep believing in it.So it wasn’t just Donald blaming outside circumstances—the economy, the banks; it was also my grandfather doing it, even though my grandfather knew better. …
Do you remember your Uncle Robert or other family sort of talking about this time period?
Not really.I know that—it was a very interesting dynamic in the family, that you didn’t—nobody went against my grandfather.So I think whether they actually believed it or not, they weren’t going to contradict anything.And Donald was always the center of attention, and he was always the most important person in the room, even though I don’t think any of us believed for a second that he was the smartest person in the room.
But, you know, as time went on, it became harder to maintain the sense that he was the best and this incredibly successful guy.You know, he and Robert had a falling out.Robert worked for him in Atlantic City for a little bit, and then when things went south, Donald essentially blamed him for his role in it.So their—they had a terrible relationship for a few years after that.
And, you know, the more he was in the media and the more extravagant and ridiculous his spending became and the more bankruptcies he declared, it was really difficult to maintain the illusion that my grandfather so desperately wanted to maintain. …
The Central Park Five and Trump’s Views on Race
Let me ask you about a scene that’s pretty important in this film, which is the Central Park Five case and the ad that he places, … that New York time period where Rudy Giuliani is running for that first term.And I’m curious to know if you remember discussing the ad with the family.
That was in the late ’80s.I was at Tufts University.And that, you know, this was back before the internet, so I don’t even know if I was completely aware of it.But I certainly did everything in my power to avoid hearing about anything he’d done.You know, I wasn’t—say, three or four years after my dad died, nobody in my family reached out to me.I saw them at holidays, but, you know, we weren’t in contact.So I just tried to avoid it.And it was much easier to avoid back then, obviously.
So when I did hear about it, I mean, it didn’t surprise me.It’s completely of a piece with the kind of thing he does now.I mean, in the—you know, racial tensions in the city were already at a boiling point.And, you know, he’s perfectly comfortable putting himself in the middle, as if he had any authority, as if he had any special knowledge that gave him the right to say the things he said.And he just, as is his wont, made a bad situation worse to benefit him, right? …
And I think one of the worst things about— you know, I saw a clip recently of a press conference he gave.And again, why was there anybody asking his opinion?It’s beyond my comprehension.But, you know, just saying the most despicable things about these innocent young men and boys.
Help me understand the ethos, the family ethos on race.Where is it coming from?
You know, they were just a very racist family, you know.I think part of it was the time.It wasn’t unusual for—I mean, it’s not like it’s unusual now, sadly, but, you know, it was certainly more common and acceptable back then.And I think it was just a question of, you know, we’re better than everybody else anyway, and if you’re different from us, you’re less than—you know, you’re not worth our respect.And people of color, African Americans in particular, Jewish people, women were all considered fair game, and racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny were very common in my grandparents’ house.And it was just the way it was.
Trump’s Search for Legitimacy
The house itself, the mood when I was reading your book was that this was a dark place; that this was not an easy childhood for any of these kids and you as grandkids.Is that right?
It wasn’t, but again, who knew, you know?I mean, I’m sure my father knew.But to this day, it was never really spoken about in those terms, and my grandfather has cast such a shadow that I do believe that towards the end of his life, the only thing that mattered to my dad was, you know, pleasing his father, which was impossible.You know, my aunt Maryanne said to me a few years ago that, at the time she was in her late 70s, and she said, “I’m still looking for my father’s approval.”And, you know, my grandfather remains Donald’s audience of one.That’s who he’s—it’s to him Donald’s continually trying to prove himself.
I thought you wrote about this really beautifully in the book, that he’s still searching for that legitimacy; that he wasn’t the adequate replacement to your dad; that he didn’t really fit in as a Manhattan real estate developer or casino tycoon and now as occupant of the Oval Office.
Right.
That legitimacy is something that he still takes very, very personally.
Yeah, because he knows he’ll never have it.
What do you mean?
Well, he's— the difference between his incompetence and the level of competence required to do the job he now has is light years apart, right?I think an argument can be made that he didn’t actually win the last election, you know?It may be a while before we figure that out, if we ever do.But it’s certainly—you know, he knows that, because he’s so hypersensitive about it.But he also knows that there’s a really good chance he’s incapable of winning the next one because he’s doing everything in his power to continue to expand voter suppression, to delegitimize mail-in voting, to make people question whether or not there’s even going to be an election, or if there is an election whether we can trust the results of the election.He’s done absolutely nothing since 2017 to address the fact that there is continuing to be Russian interference in our election system.
So why would somebody who isn’t worried about legitimacy do all of those things to continue to hold a position of power that he probably shouldn’t have had in—well, he definitely shouldn’t have had it, but whether or not he got it, got there fair and square, you know?It’s—he’s quite transparent in that way.
Is that a little bit of the power of positive thinking, of just rewriting?
Yeah, I think in part it’s the inability to admit that you’ve lost or that you didn’t measure up in some way or that you needed help.And this is one of the—it’s an interesting contradiction about Donald.He knows—he knows on some level that he can’t win without all of this help.And he’s perfectly willing to accept the help, but then will interpret it as a legitimate, overwhelming victory that he accomplished all by himself.Really interesting.He’ll do anything to win and then make it, you know, make the case that he won, deserved to win, etc.
The power of positive thinking part of it is just that, you know, it’s, how do you admit something like that?It would—it would be negative.How do you admit that you might lose?How do you admit that a lot of people aren’t going to vote for you, or a lot of people hate you or think you’re the worst president, so to speak, in the history of this country?Like, he can’t—he can’t grapple with that stuff because it threatens—it threatens him to the core.
Why do you think he wanted to be president?
I don’t think he did initially…I think it was a branding opportunity and was also a way of getting back at Barack Obama, who had humiliated him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a couple of years earlier.And it wasn’t until, you know, he realized that he might actually get the nomination, because the Republican Party handled their primary so poorly that they essentially, without knowing it or meaning to, rigged the entire thing in Donald’s favor.And then when he got the nomination and realized he was getting away with everything, and that there was this base of people in this country who would support him and, you know, admire him or have this cult-like devotion to him the worse he got. Right?Plus whatever ways in which it was being communicated to him that there might indeed be a hostile foreign power willing to back him up, that I think the idea of winning started to appeal to him, partially because, you know, the presidency could be leveraged to his financial benefit and the benefit of his children, but also because you don’t lose.Losing is an unacceptable alternative.
What was the family’s reaction to his announcement to run?
It was a joke.We didn’t take it seriously until, you know—when he got the nomination, still didn’t quite take it seriously, but it was very unnerving that he even had a 1% chance of winning, because it should have been a zero percent chance.But I don’t—I honestly don’t think anybody took it seriously until afterwards.And I don’t—didn’t really speak to them much about it.I was in too much shock and despair.
… I’ve just got one last thing, which is you wrote in the book a decent amount about his penchant for humiliation.And we’ve talked about humiliation certainly at home.But the bullying, the humiliation, things you see in the White House now?Things that you see in the administration?The way some of these adviser relationships have imploded?
Yeah, I think the thing that most surprises me about the way this has gone isn’t his use of humiliation as a weapon, as a tool to get people to come to his side of things because they’re just so afraid of how he’s going to treat them or speak of them, but it’s how many people are willing to line up, to actually think it’s going to end up differently for them than it did for the thousands of people who—for whom it didn’t work out.Like that’s the part that, you know, that and the number of people willing to enable him—that’s pretty shocking.
But, you know, I think humiliation is—it’s a way of controlling people, certainly, but it’s also a way of making him feel better about himself, because if he’s in a position of power where he’s the one holding all the cards, nobody can humiliate him.And if he gets humiliated by circumstances, he’s surrounded by people who will protect him from that at all costs because it’s not going to end well for anybody who’s the messenger in that particular case.
But yeah, it’s both a way of—it’s a method of self-aggrandizement.It’s a method of getting pleasure.I think he likes it, like my grandfather did.He gets pleasure out of humiliating people, and it makes him feel that he’s better than, more powerful than.
Thank you, Mary.I was just going to ask if we covered all the strings that you pulled from?
You know, I think we have.When I started formulating the last section of the book, I thought of the five things: He’s always been institutionalized; he’s always been an illegitimate; he’s always been used; he’s always been normalized; and he’s always been—and he’s never been held accountable.So I think on some level we did hit all of them, if not directly then indirectly, because you’re really good at this.This is great.
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