Mary L. Trump Quotes

In order to get Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history.

He learned to become the killer... who needs to succeed at all costs, who recognizes that other people are expendable, who does not need to take responsibility, who will do anything to get attention, financial rewards and "to win."

Once my Dad was out of the family business and was branded a failure, he and anyone connected to him (which would have been me) no longer mattered. So there was this level of thoughtlessness around us. So luckily we were able to laugh about it, because it's really not very funny, although some of the presents were quite hysterical... to have your uncle and his wife, who were extraordinarily wealthy, give you a 3-pack of underwear for Christmas... was a bit beyond the pale... My mom... was even lower on the totem pole than I was... Donald didn't even recognize that they were presents that he had given me.

His deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he's soaked it in. Nothing is ever enough.

Donald's need for affirmation is so great that he doesn't seem to notice that the largest group of his supporters are people he wouldn't condescend to be seen with outside of a rally.

My grandfather was an adherent to Norman Vincent Peale's doctrine of positive thinking. ...It allowed room for nothing else, and there are times in our lives when we are legitimately distressed... sad... in pain. ...[T]o be prevented to feel those feelings honestly and openly is a form of torture.

When Donald announced his run for presidency on June 16, 2015, I didn't take it seriously. I didn't think Donald took it seriously. He simply wanted the free publicity for his brand. He'd done that sort of thing before. When his poll numbers started to rise and he may have received tacit assurances from... Vladimir Putin that Russia would do everything it could to swing the election in his favor, the appeal of winning grew.

[M]y dad couldn't change who he was, so he was... dismantled over time.

<nowiki>[</nowiki>] thought that because [Donald Trump] was a man without principle, nobody would vote for him. She was horrified by the white evangelical embrace of his candidacy because she knew that he had no deep convictions about religion... and considered going to church a photo-op.

Nobody has failed upward as consistently and spectacularly as the ostensible leader of the free world.

He's utterly incapable of leading this country, and it's dangerous to allow him to do so.

He's a clown," my aunt Maryanne said during one of our regular lunches at the time. "This will never happen." I agreed. We talked about how his reputation as a faded reality star and failed businessman would doom his run. "Does anyone even believe the bullshit that he's a ? What has he ever accomplished on his own?" I asked. "Well," Maryanne said, as dry as the Sahara, "he has had five bankruptcies.

Donald was incompetent, but others in Donald's administration were anything but. What they built was a lean and ruthless machine for advancing fascism. With the help of some luck, complicit institutions, an unprepared media, and a party of willing converts, that machine largely succeeded.

Donald needed somebody to take the s when he was at Fordham in order to get into Penn. ...[I]n New York City, the name Joe Shapiro isn't exactly unique.

The full-page screed he paid to publish in the New York Times in 1989 calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death wasn't about his deep concern for the rule of law; it was an easy opportunity for him to take on a deeply serious topic that was very important to the city while sounding like an authority in the influential and prestigious pages of the Gray Lady. It was unvarnished racism meant to stir up racial animosity in a city already seething with it. All five boys... were subsequently cleared, proven innocent via incontrovertible DNA evidence. To this day, however, Donald insists that they were guilty—yet another example of his inability to drop a preferred narrative even when it's contradicted by established fact.'''