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… - Mary L. Trump

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.

Donald was to my grandfather what the border wall has been for Donald: a vanity project funded at the expense of more worthy pursuits. Fred didn't groom Donald to succeed him; when he was in his right mind, he wouldn't trust Trump management to anybody. Instead, he used Donald, despite his failures and poor judgment, as the public face of his own thwarted ambition. Fred kept propping up Donald's false sense of accomplishment until the only asset Donald had was the ease with which he could be duped by more powerful men. There was a long line of people willing to take advantage of him. In the 1980s, New York journalists and gossip columnists discovered that Donald couldn't distinguish between mockery and flattery and used his shamelessness to sell papers. That image, and the weakness of the man it represented, were precisely what appealed to .

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.