Mary L. Trump Quotes

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.

Money is the only currency in the family. ...It literally stands in for everything else: love, affection, respect. It's understandable that... my family members would cling to it so desperately, and want to acquire it.

We thought the blatant racism on display during Donald's announcement speech would be a deal breaker, but we were disabused of that idea when Jerry Falwell, Jr., and other white evangelicals started endorsing him. Maryanne, a devout Catholic since her conversion five decades earlier, was incensed. "What the fuck is wrong with them?" she said. "The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there. It's mind boggling. He has no principles. None!"

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.

<nowiki>[</nowiki>] had no empathy. He was... driven in a way that turned other people, including [family]... into pawns to be used to his own ends. If somebody could be of service... he would use them. If they couldn't be, he excised them.

This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved.

Outside of New York I don't think people really... understood the truth behind his business record, and his financial failures, which are legion and serial.

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

The brilliance of the reporting, the analyses... and the story cannot be overstated. They were... incredibly complex... financial devices that my family used to cover up... not easily decipherable. ...I was utterly blown away... to find out just what had happened within the family... These were my aunts and uncles that just happened to be my trustees... [C]learly I didn't benefit from the role that they were supposed to play in protecting my financial interests when I was younger. ...Essentially my role ended when I handed over the 40,000 pages of documents, but if The Times story is anything to go by, I think there's a lot more to uncover.

[M]y grandmother who was [often] sick.. and broke bones more times than I can count because of her , was in agony much of the time. ...She'd come home from the hospital... and just moving was extraordinarily painful for her; and my grandfather could not tolerate it. ...[I]t impinged on this idea... that everything had to be great at all times... [T]he only people who suffered for that were the people who were actually in pain... anybody... in the family who showed the weakness of being human.

It's forcing the media to have a conversation that they've never wanted to have, and never have had, which is about Donald's psychological health.

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.

<nowiki>[</nowiki>] is the origin... the ground zero of all of the family dysfunction... I believe that he was a sociopath. ...He had no real human feeling for anybody, including his children, and was quite adept at using people to his own ends; and if he found them not to be of use, he had no compunction about discarding them. ...[H]e enjoyed humiliating other weaker people a great deal.

We're talking about a man who has control of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. That makes him more dangerous than... other people, because he has the nuclear codes.

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 ...