Mary L. Trump

A clinical psychologist exploring her family of origin? Sold!

One important thing I learned was to be very careful if buying a Christmas present for Mary L. Trump. She will remember it for at least 40 years and it better be as nice as everyone else's gift and it sure as flip better not be a re-gift.

One effect of love being freely expressed and shared is that you see it everywhere. In my family (and I hope yours) presents didn't have a hidden meaning, if one person's present cost more or show more took more time than someone else's it was never planned and certainly not being used to send a message. In Mary's family warmth and unselfconscious affection is so hard to come by and neglect is so ubiquitous that everything is scrutinized for a sign of approval or disapproval and you're either left emotionally raw, where everything hurts, or numbing yourself out, where you can't allow anything to hurt.

So much of what she and the other people in the book do is completely inexplicable unless you look at it through that lens of love been so lacking and so desperately craved. For example, why the heck would two financially independent children first beg and then sue their remaining relatives for the inheritance of a cold and uncaring grandfather who intentionally let them out of his will to spite them? Why would you want that guy's money!? Because growing up when the man who never gave them a kind word but instead paid for their education and health insurance they took that scrap as a sign of love, and since they never got anything else, money became as emotionally significant as love. Being cut off financially left them feeling like one of Harlow's monkeys felt when her terrycloth was taken away.

They never had his love, they had that bit of cloth, and they have to fight for it.

The first half of the book is the most interesting. Her father, Freddy, seems like a really good person and I wish he had been able to escape his father. If she writes another book focusing instead on herself and her father and her own journey, coping and how she figured all this out I will be the first to pre-order it! The purpose of this book was quite different, it is less of the painful personal journey and more a warning for the world. show less

Donald Trump's niece Mary Trump wrote this fabulous revenge book about the origins of the dysfunction in the first family. Mary Trump is a licensed psychologist who covers the life of the family from its beginnings with Fred Trump marrying his Scottish wife Mary Anne MacLeod. It ends in 2020 at the end of Trump's first term in the White House. Within the book's pages, Mary Trump portrays her famous uncle as never having emotionally bonded with his parents, especially his mother. The problem show more began when he was two years old with his mother's emergency hysterectomy. Mary Anne Trump had two follow up surgeries for complications from the hysterectomy. She was not available to raise her children. Mrs. Trump did not fully recover from these surgeries until Uncle Donald was four years old. By that time he had learned from his father all of the behaviors that he exhibits today. He was already bullying, lying, cheating and stealing from his siblings. Fred Trump approved of Donald's behavior because it showed that he was tough.

Instead of giving a specific diagnosis, the author states that Uncle Donald failed to attach to his parents. She describes the behavior of infants and toddlers as attachment behavior which seeks a positive, comforting response from a caregiver. He did not get that. The author calls this child abuse that the Trumps inflicted on all of their children. She does not give a reason why Mary Anne Trump was distant to her children other than she was always breaking bones from the osteoporosis that set in after her hysterectomy.

The author is the daughter of Fred Trump, Jr., the oldest son and expected heir of the Trump Companies. Throughout the book she upholds her father as the only member of the family to financially support himself. His siblings preferred to take Fred's money instead. However, Fred Jr. was cruelly ridiculed by his siblings, especially Donald, for being a failure. His failure? He became a commercial pilot instead of working for his father. He also served in the Air Force National Guard which the family thought was a waste of time. Fred Jr. died when the author was 16 years old.

I have to be a spoiler and say that Mary Trump wanted revenge against the family for what they did to her father and she gets her revenge. On the last page of the book she accuses Uncle Donald of being a mass murderer because his inaction caused many COVID deaths. She also states that he knows that no one has ever loved him and never will...and he killed her father.

The book is a fast read and fascinating look at the psychology behind the dysfunctional first family. It is a must read. show less

First and foremost, this book is *NOT* a takedown of 45. It is *NOT* a cash-grab by an angry, estranged niece whose greed was stoked by envy.

It is the story of Fred Trump's family from the viewpoint of someone who, despite not being welcomed within it because her father needed to be himself, still was there inside the bunker until her father's death.

It is the memory of a person whose entire life was formed by bad parents, her own and theirs. It is the analytical conclusions of a trained show more psychologist whose degree is from a highly regarded school. It is also chilling, infuriating, and deeply, deeply saddening to read.

Freddy Trump never got a break; he died before his life developed meaning and long after he stopped caring about it. Fred, father of the Devil's Brood, was a tyrannical, withholding man without a shred of empathy or emotional capacity. Mary Anne Trump, illegal Scottish immigrant, was useless and indifferent as a mother or grandmother.

And there is no doubt that 45 was formed in this nuclear reactor to be exactly who he is. Mary Trump had a balcony seat to the process and tells us exactly what happened on the occasions she was present. This is not sensationalized or presented as a bid for pity. Dr. Trump made a concerted effort to tell us what happened *then* contextualize it on a psychological level.

I didn't want to read another hatchet job on 45. Of course I despise him. I don't need more fuel for that binfire. I do, however, need to have some context, some sense of *why* this catastrophe is unfolding. Dr. Mary Trump told me what I wanted to know.

The seeds of the present are always in the past. show less

In this profoundly sad memoir, a follow-up to her previous Too Much and Never Enough, author Mary L. Trump reveals once again just how heartless and downright inhumane her paternal relatives are. Her sociopathic grandfather Fred favored his cutthroat son Donald over his gentler namesake Fred Jr., so much so that the paterfamilias humiliated Fred Jr. at every turn. Fred Jr. drank and smoked himself to death. All this is covered in Mary L.Trump’s first book as well.

No one touched by the show more toxic influence of the supremely dysfunctional Trump family emerged unscathed. Like her ex-husband, Mary L. Trump’s mother Linda was also too damaged to be a loving parent. Her deep depression and neglect of her daughter led to young Mary’s physical and emotional suffering as well.

The really sad thing is despite her achievements, including a PhD in psychology and two previous bestselling books, Mary L. Trump still presents herself as having a long way to go to heal from the traumas of her childhood and youth.

It’s hard to know what to say after reading such a raw, and bleak, memoir. Mary L. Trump’s book is at once a personal record, a political statement against her uncle, and an indictment of the family system that killed her father and cast her and her mother aside as grasping poor relations. I hope that the author finds peace and healing. show less