Mary L. Trump Quotes

To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his s for him. That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records. Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well.

When Maryanne's turn came, she said, "... We've come a long way since that night when Freddy dumped a bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald's head because he was such a brat." Everybody familiar with the legendary mashed potato story laughed- everyone except Donald, who listened with his arms crossed tightly and a scowl on his face, as he did whenever Maryanne mentioned it. It upset him, as if he were a seven-year-old boy. He clearly still felt the sting of that long-ago humiliation.

My Dad was incapable of being what my grandfather wanted and needed him to be. So that was... a lesson that Donald took to heart. He understood on a deep level that to be like Freddy, my Dad, to be kind, to admit to mistakes, to have interests outside of the business and making money, was essentially to be destroyed.

If I can do anything to change the narrative, and to tell the truth, I need to do that because I don't believe the American people had the entire truth 4 years ago.

How do we gauge this man's ability to function in the real world, as he's never really had to. ...[T]hat ... is quite terrifying.

I knew this simply because of my family knowledge, and as a . There is no bottom... to... how bad this can get, to how egregious his behavior can be.

In Donald's mind, he has accomplished everything on his own merits, cheating notwithstanding. How many interviews has he given in which he offers the obvious falsehood that his father loaned him a mere million dollars that he had to pay back but was otherwise solely responsible for his success? It's easy to understand why he would believe this.

Donald learned that in order to be, not just protected from his father but favored by his father, he needed to be this larger than life, great, fantastic... Part of it was the toxic positivity, and part of it was just... having to convince Fred Trump Sr. that... Donald belonged on the planet and... should survive, and should succeed, and he needed to make it clear to Fred that Donald could be of use to him.

Everything's about money in this family, but I'm also different... [M]oney stood in for everything else; it was literally the only currency the family trafficked in... I knew that it was also about love, and to be disinherited... shut out entirely... was to be told quite explicitly that you don't count, and you are not loved.

I can't speak to whether he hates women, but what I can say because I grew up with it, is that women were... considered second class citizens. ...[I]t explains his casual cruelty to women and... the ease with which he objectifies them. ...[H]e certainly doesn't seem to ever have had any real deep emotional connection with wom[en], or well I guess with anybody, quite honestly. But he objectifies women and uses them in a way he certainly doesn't do with men.

I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine crieria outlined in the (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far. ...A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial disorder... [which] can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others. ...Donald may also meet some of the criteria for dependent ...an inability to make decisions or take responsibility ... He may have a long undiagnosed ...

There's a big difference between having compassion and understanding for what somebody went through as a child, but that changes once you become an adult human being. Plenty of people have had horrible childhoods, and grow up to have empathy for other people and to care about doing good in the world. Donald is not one of those people, and he needs to be held accountable.

One of the unforgivable things that my grandfather did to Donald... he severely restricted the range of human emotion that was accessible to him. ...[C]ertain feelings were not allowed: sadness... the impulse to be kind... generous... Those things that my grandfather found superfluous, unmanly... a stupid waste of time... were punished; ruthlessly punished.

[T]here are so many parallels between the circumstances in which my family operated, and in which this country is now operating. I saw... what focusing on the wrong things, elevating the wrong people, can do... the collateral damage that can be created by allowing somebody to live their lives without accountability... continuing now, on a much grander scale.

To make it worse... for Donald, when he was very young, 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 approximately... his mother, who was really his only source of human connection and comfort... got very ill and was, to all intents and purposes, absent from his life. So he suddenly found himself, so young, basically alone in the world because my grandfather was incapable of filling the void left by my grandmother's absence. ...Because of the very vulnerable age he was [at] when she became sick, I think on some level he experienced that as a betrayal. She didn't have the capacity to heal the rift, even after she was [physically] able to, and I think that stuck with him...