I do feel that I have to do whatever I can to make sure that people are informed and understand exactly what's going on with this man. - Mary L. Trump

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.

In order to get Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history.

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 .