Mary L. Trump

“My grandfather couldn't stand either one of my parents.”

“Casual dehumanization of people was commonplace at the Trump dinner table.”

“I, along with everybody else, had bought into the myth of Donald being a self-made man and being a brilliant developer. I had no idea that none of that was true because everybody acted like it was true.”

“No one knows how Donald came to be who he is better than his own family. Unfortunately, almost all of them remain silent out of loyalty or fear. I'm not hindered by either of those.”

“A lot of people who end up being horrible criminals when they are adults had very abusive childhoods. You can have sympathy for that child. It does not at all, under any circumstances, diminish their responsibility for what they do.”

“Donald began to realize that there was nothing he could do wrong, so he stopped trying to do anything 'right.' He became bolder and more aggressive because he was rarely challenged or held to account by the only person in the world who mattered - his father.”

“At home - where my grandmother certainly had to deal with Donald more than my grandfather did because he was at work all the time - he was incredibly disrespectful to her. He didn't listen to her. He was a slob. He tormented - in one way or another, I think he tormented all of his siblings.”

“Growing up, I never known anybody in my family actually to interact with a person of color.”

“The fact is, Donald's pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neurophysical tests that he'll never sit for.”

“For the first forty years of his real estate career, my grandfather never acquired debt. In the 1970s and '80s, however, all of that changed as Donald's ambition grew larger and his missteps became more frequent.”

“I think the simplest way to put it is to say that Donald continues to need to prove to his father that he's the tough guy, the killer, the best, you know, that he's winning all the time, and above all, that he's not weak. And the ways to be weak in my family were to be kind, to admit mistakes, and to apologize.”

“I had to take down Donald Trump.”

“You know, my dad was a second lieutenant in the Air National Guard Reserve, and my grandfather wasn't particularly happy about the time it took away from the family business.”

“Donald was to my grandfather what the border wall has been for Donald: a vanity project funded at the expense of more worthy pursuits.”

“I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist - he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' (DSM-5) - but the label gets us only so far.”

“Media failed to notice that not one member of Donald's family, apart from his children, his son-in-law and his current wife said a word of support of him during the entire campaign.”

“Certainly, in the case of my dad, who was the oldest son, heir apparent and namesake, there was harsh discipline and humiliation which Donald, seven and a half years younger, was able to witness and learn very specific lessons from: don't be like Freddy, don't be kind, don't be generous, don't have 'frivolous' interests.”

“The simple fact is that Donald is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Telling the stories of those we've lost would bore him. Acknowledging the victims of COVID-19 would be to associate himself with their weakness, a trait his father taught him to despise.”

“Donald's monstrosity is the manifestation of the very weakness within him that he's been running from his entire life. For him, there has never been any option but to be positive, to project strength, no matter how illusory, because doing anything else carries a death sentence; my father's short life is evidence of that.”

“The worst thing my grandfather did, starting from very early on, was just not accept my father for who he is. As soon as he realized that my dad wasn't the 'right kind of person' - he wasn't 'a killer', he wasn't 'tough' - he dismissed him out of hand and quickly found a replacement in Donald.”