I decided after a year or two of the Trump presidency that I wasn’t going to read most of the tell-all books about Donald Trump, his life, his corrupt administration, and all the bizarreness that constantly surrounds him. I read several of them early on, but quickly concluded that reading these books was a joyless and monumentally depressing exercise.
Having recognized before he was even elected that Donald Trump was clearly a sociopath and a narcissist, I soon discovered that reading more details of his pathetic existence and chaotic administration brought me few additional insights into his condition and behavior, and no enjoyment whatsoever. Another disincentive to reading Trump-related books was the fact that every shocking new detail of his story contained in the latest sensational book release immediately appeared on every cable news show and in the constant news coverage of Trump, so there was never anything new or surprising to be learned by the time any of these books reached the bookshelves.
Despite all that, I recently read Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough, the only book to appear so far written by an actual Trump family member. The author is someone who knew the long history of the family members and their relationships from close-up personal experience. Her insider’s account is enhanced and made even more credible by the fact that she is also a PhD clinical psychologist, who specializes (not surprisingly) in the sorts of dysfunctional psychological conditions which appear to abound in the lives of many of the Trump family members.
Of course, much of the most interesting content from the book was also immediately revealed through the mass media as soon as it was published, partly through broadcast interviews with the author herself, so again, the amount of new information in the book that wasn’t already a part of the gigantic trove of public knowledge of Donald Trump by the time I read it was fairly limited. Nevertheless, there was value in hearing the whole story and her clinical analysis directly from her, in book form – it made it more believable, more complete, and more emotionally comprehensible and resonant than most of the Trump literature.
Mary Trump was the daughter of Donald Trump’s older brother Fredy. The story she tells about the family is almost Shakespearean in its dramatic excesses and its notorious, conniving characters. At the head of the family was Fred Trump, a driven entrepreneur and family patriarch who built a real estate empire in Brooklyn, and became fabulously wealthy, but had little time or love for anyone else. Like most patriarchs, he looked originally to his oldest son, Mary’s father Fredy, to become his principal successor and heir in his real estate business.
The problem with this plan was that Fredy had little interest in or aptitude for his father’s real estate business. He went off to serve in the army, which he liked and where he did well, but this disgusted his father, who had no use for the military or the concept of service. Fredy loved boats and airplanes too, and had the money to buy them and learn to operate them, but his father also had nothing but contempt for these activities. At one point, Fredy even snuck off to become an airline pilot, a goal which he actually achieved on his own, and was able to pursue successfully for a brief period of time, thereby further enraging his father.
But that didn’t last, because Fredy also had alcohol and drug problems, caused no doubt by the constant stress of trying and failing to satisfy his father's plans for him. So Fredy kept coming back to his father and the family business each time he failed at his own projects, trying hopelessly to find a role in the business he could play well, to win his cold-hearted father’s approval, and eventually be able to support his growing family.
Meanwhile, Donald (Fred's second son) was observing Fredy’s failures to meet their father’s harsh and unforgiving expectations, and decided to modify his own behaviors in ways that would gain him “favorite” status with his father Fred. The behaviors he chose were exactly those that we recognize in the troubled and extreme personality we know today.
He would become a “killer”. He would be the person who disparaged and mocked “losers”, ironically eventually even including his father, after Fred was afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease. He would learn to treat everyone – even his closest family members – as worthless objects, to be despised, used and manipulated for his own purposes, without any sympathy or empathy for any difficulties they might be experiencing. And he would learn to excel in creating a fictitious public image of himself as a powerful, wealthy, and indomitable businessman, regardless of his lack of any demonstrated abilities or personal achievements independent of those enabled by his wealthy father.
According to Mary Trump, every one of the destructive and dysfunctional behaviors Donald tried out on those around him just gained him more approval from Fred Senior, and more leniency from this cold-blooded father for his obnoxiousness, cruelty and misbehavior. It was ironic, as Ms. Trump points out, that none of Fred's indulgence could ever actually reassure the chronically insecure Donald deep down that his father really loved him. And he probably didn't. Fred didn't appear to have the capacity to love or empathize with others either, just as Donald doesn't.
This is an extremely disturbing but highly credible insider’s look into the dark heart of a family with serious behavioral and psychological disorders, who somehow produced the strange and historically anomalous figure of Donald Trump, whose ambitions, unchecked rage, sociopathy and incompetence have so clouded the recent past, present and perhaps near future of our country. Recommended.
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