“He’s a sociopath. Take that for what it’s worth,” Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, says in comparing Ivanka Trump to her grandfather Fred.
Raw Story has more on Mary Trump’s conversation with John Aravosis and Cliff Schecter of the UnPresidented Podcast. Trump is promoting her latest book, “The Reckoning: Our Nation’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal.” The podcast format gave the former president’s niece much more freedom to speak her mind than a six-minute cable news appearance. She did, beginning with her late father’s story:
Fred Trump’s eldest and namesake, Freddy Trump, was supposed to take over the business and build it bigger and better. But he was so disenchanted with what he had to deal with that he left and decided to do what he loved, flying. That was what ultimately turned Donald into the new Trump heir.
Like his father, Donald also skipped over his namesake and elevated Ivanka to be the more important part of the business. This was, in part, because Don Jr. is the least intelligent of the Trump children, Mary Trump explained.
As for Donald, he is “the weakest person on the planet” but still is successful after his fashion because “he’s been propped up so much.” And Don Jr. (Donnie)?
“Donnie is weak in a different way,” she continued. “He had no intention of striking out on his own. He had no intention of doing anything but sucking up and toeing the line, and the problem is — one of the problems is — and who knows how this happens — but kind of the same problem that happened to him happened to my dad. My grandfather, for whatever reason, didn’t like my father and saw something in his sibling Donald, and the only thing that’s weird is that Donald did the same thing but with Ivanka.”
Donald exhibits childlike behavior like threatening not to be someone’s friend if they are not nice to him. “Some of that’s just arrested development,” says Mary Trump [timestamp 26:00].
The thing he wants most is to be loved, yet “my grandfather made him unlovable.”
But the people who love him he despises. He thinks they’re suckers, assholes, dupes and marks, but he’d never admit it to himself. That would diminish how their adulation burnishes his image. [29:15]
The country suffers from chronic PTSD from its inception, Mary explains in her book. The traumas made us susceptible to men such as Donald because “no powerful white men have ever been held accountable, starting with Robert E. Lee.” And the U.S. has never acknowledged nor atoned for how powerful white supremacy was and continues to be. [36:20]
Despite our progress on matters of race, saving the country from democracy’s downward spiral presents a challenge made worse by the untreated PTSD and our own habits of mind. The notion that bipartisanship is an essential function of governing leaves people like Sen. Joe Manchin trying to make common cause with “a party of fascists” seeking to turn the U.S. into “a theocratic apartheid state.” [43:40]
At its most basic, one party only wants Republicans to vote and the other wants everyone to vote. The voter suppression Republicans promote as rampant is a lie used to justify passing voter suppression laws.
Aravosis responds that where one party believes only Republicans should vote and the other believes everyone should vote, the public concludes, well, let’s compromise, and it’s a win for the anti-democracy party. We get a watered-down version of “only Republicans should vote.”
Should Donald regain the Oval Office in 2024, Mary argued, now that he knows better how to wield the power the office affords, Donald would spent his next term settling scores and seeking vengeance against perceived enemies. There is surely a list, one with her on it. She might have to go into hiding, Mary laughed. Turning serious, she added that she really wasn’t joking. [1:40:00]
The former president this week filed a lawsuit against Mary and the New York Times for “conspiring in an ‘insidious plot’ to improperly obtain his confidential tax records and exploit their use in news articles and a book.” Pulitzer Prize judges called the 2018 Times report “an exhaustive 18-month investigation” that “revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges.”
“This is the latest in a long line of frivolous lawsuits by Donald Trump that target truthful speech and important journalism on issues of public concern,” said Mary Trump’s attorney Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., It is “doomed to failure.”
But winning in court is not always Donald Trump’s goal. He threatens lawsuits to silence critics. As longtime Hullabaloo readers know, two years ago Trump sicced one of his lawyers on us. He is that petty.