In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric. Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her … her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who occupied the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.
A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.
Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.
more
Nature versus nurture? Our past influences our present and future. This is a memoir written by President’ Trump’s niece, a psychologist, who dissects the president’s childhood, and how it impacts him today. It’s a sad tale, actually, about a “poor little rich boy,” entitled, but ignored. It’s about a greedy, penurious, cold family who never read books or patronized the arts. Theirs was all about work, swindling, and making money (while using other people’s money). They even neglected their own for personal gain. This book reveals the psychology behind President Trump’s bombastic and erratic behavior.
I enjoyed this book’s storyline. I thought this book’s storyline was sad . I thought Mary Trump did great on the insight in the story. I’m happy I read this.
3.5 stars. I listened to the audiobook, which was read by the author so that was cool. Mostly this book just made me sad for Mary, her brother, and her parents – what an awful, dysfunctional, cold family to be born into. It was telling that even as a kid, people didn’t really like Donald and found him to be just another bratty, snobby rich kid. I found the final chapter the most compelling: she lays out, from a psychological perspective, why Trump does what he does, is how he is, and will never change. Get this guy OUT. NOW.
This much-heralded book isn’t so much about President Trump; instead, his niece offers up a portrait of a fascinating family that went astray due to a variety of factors. Her rejection of her famous uncle is plain enough, and backed up with many bleak stories, but it’s definitely not just a vengeful diatribe. People craving a nothing-but-dirt wallow in mudslinging will find much more pungent stuff elsewhere.
Here in the closing weeks of the 2020 campaign, this is probably Mary’s most telling soundbite: “[Trump’s] ability to control unfavorable situations by lying, spinning, and obfuscating has diminished to the point of impotence in the midst of the tragedies we are currently facing.”
Book Review: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man by Mary Trump (2020) (Nonfiction) 4 Stars ****
Is turning into your parents one of your greatest fears? That’s exactly what happens to Donald Trump, President of the United States. This diatribe by the president’s niece should more correctly have a photo of her grandfather Fred Trump Sr. and all of his children on the cover—except the author’s father. Fred Jr., the hapless victim of his father’s and younger brother Donald’s merciless criticism and public insults. Fred wanted his kids to be killers, i.e. always the winner in any situation by any means necessary. Anyone who is not a winner, is a loser. Period. The dirtier the deal and the conduct, the louder and bigger the lies, the more people stepped on, the more praise is deserved. If you can’t use them to attain your goals and better your deal, get rid of them—just useless trash not worthy of your time. Ill-fated Fred Jr. lacked the killer instinct—out he went with his younger brother Donald, an apt and eager student for his father’s warped ideals, ready to take his coveted place in the Trump Empire. Look out New York City!
Fred Sr. was a force to be reckoned with. His sons longed for his approval. With an unreasonably condemnatory and demanding father and an aloof, sickly, uninvolved mother, the five Trump siblings struggled for approval, attention, and love. Taught to be hypercrtical of one another, suppress feelings and vulnerabilities, and always put themselves before all others, this dysfunctional family became a war zone at the family and holiday dinner table. Drowning? Too bad for you. You should have learned to swim. Your baby is critically ill and near death? So, what do you want me to do about that? Your brother lies dying in his hospital bed at 42 years old from a heart attack brought on by years of alcoholism and depression? What’s that got to do with me? I’m going to the movies.
The Trump family is portrayed as greedy, spiteful, cold, merciless, deceitful manipulating lawbreakers by Mary Trump who holds a MS in Literature and a PhD in Clinical Psychology. She labels her grandfather Fred Sr. and her uncle Donald as two peas in a pod. She attributes the following to Donald Trump: anti-social personality disorder, dependent personality, narcissism, learning disabled, and socopathy to name a few, which is all exacerbated by his poor diet, lack of exercise and sleep, and his protected environment (body guards, Oval Office, military school, private schools, colleges where his parents donated millions of dollars) whereby people outside of his coterie cannot get near him. Mary Trump concludes, “We can’t evaluate his day-to-day functioning because he is, in the West Wing, essentially institutionalized. Donald has been institutionalized for most of his adult life, so there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.”
Wow! Wow! and Wow!
It’s obvious that Mary Trump has an ax to grind. If what she says is true, the Trump family intentionally went out of their way to cheat her and her brother out of the fortunes due them. Fred Sr. had only contempt for his oldest son Fred Jr., loathed his weak, purposeless wife, hated their two children for blatant disrespect such as not wearing a tie or or in Mary’s case, wearing a baggy sweater to the dinner table. Fred Jr. is dead. He was a useless, weak disappointment. He’s not around to receive his share of the family fortune. Why should his lazy widow and equally lazy kids get the money that would have been his? He’s not here, but we are. (BTW, the kids aren’t at all lazy and their mother was a stay at home mom, as was the custom of the day.)
Mary Trump is now exacting revenge on the whole clan by using her uncle Donald as a pawn in her scheme to topple the Trump family right off their pedestals. By now you’ve heard of the major tax fraud investigation being brought against Donald Trump? Guess who supplied the New York Times with boxes and boxes of family financial statements, records and receipts? It seems Mary inherited the family thirst for revenge, “When I finally realized that my grandfather didn’t care what I accomplished or contributed and that my own unrealistic expectations were paralyzing me, I still felt that only a grand gesture would set it right. It wasn’t enough for me to volunteer at an organization helping Syrian refugees; I had to take Donald down.”
Regardless of your politics and whether you believe Donald Trump is a great president or a total disaster, we can’t ignore that this books airs dirty Trump family laundry. Who knows what is true, false or that vast gray area in between? As I have said many times: When a parent abuses a child physically, mentally or emotionally, the child does not grow up to hate the parent; they grow up to hate themselves.
Historical
There was a time when I admired Trump, just a little. Here was this charismatic, wealthy, successful man that was always in the spotlight. Then a few decades later he got on tv, with The Apprentice, and my admiration slowly dwindled off. As a president, I have lost all respect for the ‘pussy grabber’. It is what it is…
When my coworker offered for me to read her copy of this book, I was curious. I wanted to know what the niece had to dish.
Man, she gave us the whole cupboard too!
She told us readers all of their business, right down to the dollar. Frankly, none of us needed to know some of it. Personal business should still stay personal business. Thanks to her disloyalty to her family though, we get the story on everything.
Does it change my now negative opinion of Donald Trump?
No.
But I understand why he is the way he is now. That whole family is disturbed, including Mary. This book felt like a bit of revenge on her part.
It also felt like most of the revenge was directed at the grandfather, Fred. Along with the story which was mostly focused on him as well.
Remember folks, this is just my opinion. After you read it, I’d like to hear yours though.
There wasn’t a lot that was new, but coming from a member of the Trump family, it carried weight, something that comments from strangers made online don’t. Overall, it paints a clear picture of who Donald Trump is and how he became that person. It’s really kind of sad.
Knowing of the Trump family from having lived in neighboring Jamaica Hills, nothing was a surprise, but there was a sort of schadenfreud-y satisfaction to be gained from reading the facts, and finding they were actually the rotters they really seemed to be!
My interest in this book first was that Mary has a PhD in Psychology, second that she was a family insider and would be privy to information in a different setting than a typical interviewer, and third it just seemed to be an interesting point of view. I really didn’t expect anything earth shattering, and there wasn’t. Some slight surprises and of course information that had not yet gone public. I found it very interesting to be reading this book and at the same time watching Donald in real time.
As a natural study/observer of human behavior, much of what she had to say was not surprising to me. I had had suspicions to many things she pointed out before. The familial information filled in the blanks. Her point of view was believable. I would highly recommend this book to be an essential read.
Incredible to think that man sits in the White House
This book says it all
Interesting insight on the Trump family dysfunction.
The book was well written, but the author’s main purpose seemed to be defending her father’s behavior and blaming his problems on being a member of the Trump family.
dat boy come from a fucked up family
As soon as I heard about this book, written by our current President’s niece, I couldn’t wait to read it. I thought it would reveal all the nasty secrets about Donald J. Trump’s childhood before he became a man and went on to ruin our country. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this well-written autobiography of a girl who grew up on the fringes of Donald’s immediate family. The fact that Mary Trump holds a Ph.D. in psychology makes her the perfect person to offer this type of insight into the Trump family dynamics. Instead of focusing on gossip and scandal, the author has chosen to provide a physiological profile of her family. Trump Sr. was a domineering sociopath—driven to make money at any cost. Since Mary’s father, Fred Thump Jr., the oldest of the five Trump children, didn’t live up to his old man’s expectations and was often excluded from his businesses, became an alcoholic, then died of a heart attack at the age of 42, his children—including Mary Trump—did not share a lot of personal time with their uncle, Donald, but drawing from her own memories, as well as accounts from family and friends, she paints an in-depth picture of a cold, loveless childhood that helped shape the dangerous monster that somehow got elected to the highest office in the world. Regardless of political affiliation, I don’t think anyone alive today can ignore the damage that this President has done to our democracy. Or deny the way he has lowered America’s standing in the eyes of the world—not to mention the lives being lost everyday to the Coronavirus pandemic for lack of leadership. I’m certainly glad some of his family has finally decided to speak out. Thank you, Mary Trump. Now, I hope people will listen.
To call the Trump family dysfunctional is like calling the Covid-19 pandemic a mild case of the sniffles.
Mary Trump, Donald’s niece, provides an insightful recounting of how Fred Trump, her sociopathic grandfather, destroyed his oldest son, Mary’s father, and created the monster second son Donald has become, as well as depicting other family members. A clinical psychologist, Mary explains in a manner readily accessible to the lay reader how Fred’s manipulation and his wife’s indifference resulted in Donald’s severely arrested development.
I listened to Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough on Audible, narrated by Ms. Trump, and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand how the person who became one of the world’s most powerful people acquired his personality traits. Ms. Trump, a PhD in psychology and the daughter of Donald Trump’s deceased brother Freddy, is absolutely the person to tell this story, and she does it quite compellingly. At times, I felt as though certain details could have been edited out–not because they weren’t interesting, but because the story got slightly repetitive a few times–but overall, it’s a great, if disturbing, read.
Easy to read, very insightful and direct. It provides a unique perspective that should be considered when analyzing the current events the are affecting everyone in our nation. It is a portrait painted in vivid clarity with hints of revenge served coldly in calculated measures.
I want to buy the book!
I do not have time to read lately which I do regret, but with everything going on, i felt this was one to set aside some time for. I read it aloud to my daughter so we could read it at the same time and finished it in one day. So insightful and explains so much. I also loved that she showed without felling the need to explain herself, that she still was there for her family even after the atrocities that she and her brother have been through. Most people would have rather disown their family than still be a part of their lives, but this is a family nonetheless. i do want Karma to come back and take revenge on the elder Aunt and Trump, but if Mary can get past it, so can I.
This is a book of a family destroyed by evil and that evil is reigning down on America via Donald Trump. Everyone needs to read this book and use it as a cautionary tale before you hit the voting booth in November. Or even mail in your vote to avoid being hacked. God bless us all.