The Family Where it Happened

       Those of you who haven’t read Dr. Mary Trump’s Book but have seen such commentary as her two uncles have uttered in bashing the runaway best seller and its author should take what they say with the same grain of salt as every other lie which comes daily, or more like hourly from the President and his mouthpieces. 

        Of course, it’s embarrassing to be identified as the progeny of a sociopath builder, cum slum lord, (Fred Sr,) who enabled two of his sons and emotionally abused one while being emotionally unavailable in every way except inculcating the concept of money at any cost. Both Robert and Donald were willing to take all that was offered, while Fred Jr. (Dr Trump’s father) opted for getting away from the toxic environment and eventually was forced to return because he was unable to function without booze. Donald, especially, was the golden child because he was a braggart and social climber, which his far less polished father admired. As Donald’s social notoriety increased, even as his businesses increasingly lost money, Fred Sr. saw the name Trump, in the media, gloried in it, and pumped questionably documented millions into them. 

        Dr. Trump doesn’t, in any sense, sugar coat her father’s foibles and failures, however, she also pulls no punches in limning her paternal grandparents as an aloof, asocial and cash driven father and distant, emotionally unavailable, mother. The result, MaryAnne, Robert and Donald grew up defensive to a fault and, to a great extent, mirroring their parents.  

        It’s not my intent to be a spoiler, but know that, as Fred Sr. was in the throes of Alzheimer’s, the three named above attempted to get him to sign papers essentially diverting full control of the business to Donald and Robert while effectively disinheriting Fred Junior’s branch of the family. Fred Sr, in a rare lucid moment, refused. Along the way, Fred Sr, had enabled Donald to an extent which beggers belief, siphoning huge amounts of cash in what amounted to money laundering, to help keep Donald’s increasingly failing businesses afloat. Trump who bragged that he had started his “empire” with a “small loan” from his father was in fact the beneficiary of a stream of tax fraud income in the area of $430 million. The Trump Organization holdings, “formally” valued at Fred Sr.’s death at about $30 million were actually worth closer to a billion. Most of the difference was money on which tax should have been paid but wasn’t.

         The documentation of the financial shenanigans involved   is what Mary Trump, having discovered it, eventually gave to the New York Times. Meanwhile Donald’s older sister MaryAnne, the beneficiary of a fortune and political pull was made a federal judge, not on merit, but on family ties. She has remained relatively silent.

        Mary Trump has not revealed anything startling, relative to her uncle's erratic behavior, which we haven’t seen played out over the past 3 ½ years of this seemingly eternal national nightmare. She has simply filled in the detailed background of the incredibly dysfunctional set of abusive familial relationships which explain it. She has done it (and I take her at her  word) because like so many of us, she is appalled by his continuing incompetence and childish behavior as what should be the leader of the free world but has become the butt of jokes from Germany to New Zealand and all points in between. She seems genuinely afraid, as are many of us, of what he might do if granted a second term.

       And finally, while it would be difficult to find two observers with more divergent political points of view or for whom I have a wider divergence of regard than Dr. Mary Trump and John Bolton, one fact rings true. Their evaluations of the actions and attitudes of Donald Trump are consistent. Bolton describes them as an on-scene observer and Mary Trump explains them in the context of the familial zoo which created and enabled them.

       I am reminded of a line in “All the President’s Men” where “Deep Throat” (the superb Hal Holbrook in the movie) is chastising Bob Woodward in a clandestine parking garage meet and says “You’ve made people feel sorry for Haldeman. I didn’t think that was possible.” By the end of this book one might even feel sorry for Donald Trump….but no, not today, not ever. The stakes are far too high.