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Tim O'Brien piece on Mary Trump's book: A Guided Tour into the Troubled Mind of Donald Trump
Last edited Wed Jul 8, 2020, 08:56 AM - Edit history (1)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-08/mary-trump-s-guided-tour-into-her-uncle-donald-s-troubled-mindMary’s clarity, training, discipline and sharp eye help make her a reliable narrator, and she’s a fluid, witty writer to boot. Much of what’s she’s written about I’ve covered as a journalist and an author (Donald unsuccessfully sued me for libel for my 2005 biography, TrumpNation). Everything in her book that I’m familiar with is spot on. There is plenty in the book, however, that I wasn’t aware of, and I suspect that’s the reason the president and his siblings have gone to court to try to halt its publication. The Trumps know that Mary’s understanding of her family is authentic — she’s a true insider in an era when “insider” accounts of the president are a dime-a-dozen — and that what she’s written is likely to be indelible.
-snip-
Fred Sr. was steely and unforgiving, while his wife, Mary, lived in his shadow, emotionally distant and demanding. The Queens mansion where Donald grew up as his father’s favorite is an intimidating pile that Mary calls The House. In the basement of The House, Fred Sr., a teetotaler, kept an elegant bar outfitted with everything but alcohol and guarded by a collection of life-sized wooden statues of Native American chiefs standing along a wall. An oil painting of a lovely Black nightclub singer with “generous swaying hips” backed by a Black jazz band hung on a wall nearby. That was apparently as close as Fred Sr. wanted Black people to get to his family. The son of a German immigrant, he slurred any person of color seeking to rent an apartment from him as “die Schwarze.” Roy Cohn, the infamous lawyer and mob confidante, came into the Trumps’ lives when Fred Sr. and Donald retained him to battle a Justice Department probe of racial discrimination at Trump properties in the 1970s.
-snip-
Other observers have picked up on some of this over the years, of course. Liz Smith, the late New York gossip columnist, had a street-smart understanding of Trump. “There’s something about him that’s ever juvenile. It’s hard to believe he’s a grown-up person who went to college,” she once told me. “He’s like a kid, and he’s got that brash, narcissistic thing that works for him. He has enormous appeal to the masses because of that.”
But Mary understands that’s not a benign matter anymore. “Donald today is much as he was at three years old: incapable of growing, learning or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information,” she writes. “This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved.”
-snip-
“He has suffered mightily,” Mary writes of Donald’s worldview, “and if you aren’t doing all you can to alleviate that suffering, you should suffer too.”
-snip-
Fred Sr. was steely and unforgiving, while his wife, Mary, lived in his shadow, emotionally distant and demanding. The Queens mansion where Donald grew up as his father’s favorite is an intimidating pile that Mary calls The House. In the basement of The House, Fred Sr., a teetotaler, kept an elegant bar outfitted with everything but alcohol and guarded by a collection of life-sized wooden statues of Native American chiefs standing along a wall. An oil painting of a lovely Black nightclub singer with “generous swaying hips” backed by a Black jazz band hung on a wall nearby. That was apparently as close as Fred Sr. wanted Black people to get to his family. The son of a German immigrant, he slurred any person of color seeking to rent an apartment from him as “die Schwarze.” Roy Cohn, the infamous lawyer and mob confidante, came into the Trumps’ lives when Fred Sr. and Donald retained him to battle a Justice Department probe of racial discrimination at Trump properties in the 1970s.
-snip-
Other observers have picked up on some of this over the years, of course. Liz Smith, the late New York gossip columnist, had a street-smart understanding of Trump. “There’s something about him that’s ever juvenile. It’s hard to believe he’s a grown-up person who went to college,” she once told me. “He’s like a kid, and he’s got that brash, narcissistic thing that works for him. He has enormous appeal to the masses because of that.”
But Mary understands that’s not a benign matter anymore. “Donald today is much as he was at three years old: incapable of growing, learning or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information,” she writes. “This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved.”
-snip-
“He has suffered mightily,” Mary writes of Donald’s worldview, “and if you aren’t doing all you can to alleviate that suffering, you should suffer too.”
Much more at the link.
That last paragraph explains Trump's eagerness to hire and promote people who defend him against his perceived enemies, no matter how unqualified they are for the jobs he assigns them.
And it explains how viciously he'll turn on them if he believes they failed him.
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