President Donald Trump’s estranged niece paints a portrait of a man trained in deception and braggadocio by a distant and dysfunctional father in her highly anticipated family memoir set to be published next week.
Mary Trump writes in her book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” that she was first moved to take action in 2017 as she watched “democracy disintegrating and people’s lives unraveling” as a result of her uncle’s actions.
Bloomberg News obtained a copy of the book, scheduled for release next week by Simon & Schuster, written by the daughter of the president’s late older brother.
The president previously dismissed the Times report as a “hit piece” that was “old” and “boring.” On Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany called Mary Trump’s work “a book of falsehoods” full of “absurd allegations.”
The tell-all book has been the subject of intense legal wrangling, with Robert Trump — Mary’s other uncle — suing to block its publication, citing a 20-year-old confidentiality agreement struck by family members to resolve a bitter legal fight over the will of Fred Trump, the family patriarch.
“I am deeply disappointed in my niece Mary’s decision to write a book concerning our family,” Robert Trump said in a statement. “Her attempt to sensationalize and mischaracterize our family relationship after all of these years for her own financial gain is both a travesty and injustice to the memory of my late brother Fred and our beloved parents.”
In the book, Mary Trump writes that Donald’s success was built on a myth, particularly in his Atlantic City days. She said his “exaggerated assessment of himself was simultaneously fueled and validated by banks that were throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at him and a media that lavished him with attention and unwarranted praise. The two combined rendered him blind to how dire his situation was.”
“I watched in real time as Donald shredded norms, endangered alliances, and trod upon the vulnerable,” she wrote. “The only thing about it that surprised me was the increasing number of people willing to enable him.”
In the book Mary Trump also claims she was the source of leaked tax documents about the Trump Organization central to a Pulitzer Prize-winning report in the New York Times detailing the president’s finances. That report revealed financial schemes used by the president during the 1990s to avoid tax liabilities.
(Excerpt) Read more in: Bloomberg News