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 a… - Mary L. Trump

After a decade during which Donald floundered, dragged down by bankruptcies and reduced to fronting for... failed products... The Apprentice traded on Donald's image as a brash, self-made deal-maker, a myth that had been the creation of my grandfather... that astonishingly, considering the vast trove of evidence disproving it, had survived into the new millennium... [I]n 2015, a significant percentage of the American population had been primed to believe...

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.

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.