Mary L. Trump Quotes

Donald has always been protected and continues to be protected from his inadequacies... incompetence... lack of knowledge, from his failures... [H]e's always had support from more powerful people... protecting him from his mistakes, or from people who would try to hold him to account; and he's always been amply financed.

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.

I realized there literally was nothing that I could say at the time. Nothing stuck. ...He insulted a Gold Star family... a second amendment defense against Hillary Clinton, and... by the time the Access Hollywood tape came around, I knew that if I had said anything I would have been painted as a disgruntled, disinherited niece...

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.

[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.

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."

Donald... had to sacrifice whatever goodness there may have been in him once, whatever capacities of experiencing the full range of human emotions, to my grandfather... at the cost of all of us.

Unfortunately for Donald, he could be of use... Donald had many years of watching my father be the wrong one. ...Clearly he learned the lesson from watching his almost 8 year old brother be punished for being kind... generous... sensitive, for having interests outside of what my grandfather thought was acceptable. ...[H]ang out with his friends... boat and fish and fly... He was not a killer.

In my father's case, tragically, he was not of use.

<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.

While [hundreds of] thousands of Americans die alone, Donald touts stock market gains. As my father lay dying alone, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he'll facilitate it... then he'll ignore the fact that you died.

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.'''

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.

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.