In my father's case, tragically, he was not of use. - Mary L. Trump

Donald learned that in order to be, not just protected from his father but favored by his father, he needed to be this larger than life, great, fantastic... Part of it was the toxic positivity, and part of it was just... having to convince Fred Trump Sr. that... Donald belonged on the planet and... should survive, and should succeed, and he needed to make it clear to Fred that Donald could be of use to him.

By 2004, when The Apprentice first aired, Donald's finances were a mess (even with his $170 million cut of my grandfather's estate when he and his siblings sold the properties), and his... "empire" consisted of increasingly desperate branding opportunities such as , , and . That made him an easy target for Burnett. Both Donald and his viewers were the butt of the joke that was The Apprentice, which, despite all evidence to the contrary, presented him as a legitimately successful tycoon.

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.