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You really don't need a deep dive into Donald Trump's personality disorders. It's all right there, on his Twitter account, an inch-deep pig-shit lagoon of thin-skinned grievance, narcissism, conspiracy theories, and racism. Like a crude pastiche of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, no one is really home, just a philosophical zombie reflecting whatever is on Fox.
But if you want to go deeper, there's this book by Trump's niece, a PhD psychologist and longtime witness to the family's dysfunction. Mary Trump places the origin of the trauma in Fred Trump, her grandfather (Trump's father, for those who might need diagrams). Fred was a demanding, unyielding, unloving man; a grasping skinflint slumlord who genuinely built a real estate empire of cheap apartments in the Bronx.
The family drama concerns Mary's father, Freddy Trump. Freddy was the heir-designate, but he couldn't be as hard or mean as Trump Sr. wanted. Despite an attempt to break free as a TWA pilot in the 1960s, when flying for TWA meant something, Freddy sunk into alcoholism and a shadow existence near his parents. He and his children were disinherited, cut out of the corrupt schemes that made the rest of the family millionaires.
Donald served as Fred's surrogate, the villainously charismatic frontman who'd take the family into the bright lights of Manhattan real estate and being a name people respected. Donald, as we all know, squandered the actual business on bad speculative casinos and debt laden projects. He's a joke, a disgrace, and to our infinite pain, the president.
If you've read the New York Times reporting based on Mary Trump's lawsuit documents, (Decade in the Red, May 7, 2018), you have the facts of the story. There are some good burns, though the memesters at Meidas Touch and The Lincoln Project are better. And in the end, this is most about the texture of growing up in Fred Trump's orbit.
And finally, could Mary have told us any of this in 2016, when it might have mattered? Everyone thought some other part of the American institutions could have protected us, but she knew better than most how much of a disaster Donald would be.
But if you want to go deeper, there's this book by Trump's niece, a PhD psychologist and longtime witness to the family's dysfunction. Mary Trump places the origin of the trauma in Fred Trump, her grandfather (Trump's father, for those who might need diagrams). Fred was a demanding, unyielding, unloving man; a grasping skinflint slumlord who genuinely built a real estate empire of cheap apartments in the Bronx.
The family drama concerns Mary's father, Freddy Trump. Freddy was the heir-designate, but he couldn't be as hard or mean as Trump Sr. wanted. Despite an attempt to break free as a TWA pilot in the 1960s, when flying for TWA meant something, Freddy sunk into alcoholism and a shadow existence near his parents. He and his children were disinherited, cut out of the corrupt schemes that made the rest of the family millionaires.
Donald served as Fred's surrogate, the villainously charismatic frontman who'd take the family into the bright lights of Manhattan real estate and being a name people respected. Donald, as we all know, squandered the actual business on bad speculative casinos and debt laden projects. He's a joke, a disgrace, and to our infinite pain, the president.
If you've read the New York Times reporting based on Mary Trump's lawsuit documents, (Decade in the Red, May 7, 2018), you have the facts of the story. There are some good burns, though the memesters at Meidas Touch and The Lincoln Project are better. And in the end, this is most about the texture of growing up in Fred Trump's orbit.
And finally, could Mary have told us any of this in 2016, when it might have mattered? Everyone thought some other part of the American institutions could have protected us, but she knew better than most how much of a disaster Donald would be.