Trump niece’s book describes ‘nightmare’ family
Mary L. Trump was embroiled in a feud over her inheritance two decades ago when her uncle, President Donald Trump, and his siblings punched back in classic style. In an obscure court filing, they belittled her, alleging that she “lives primarily off the Trump income” and is “not gainfully employed.”
Actually, Mary Trump had embarked on a new career. She studied patients with schizophrenia at Hillsdale Hospital on Long Island for at least six months during this period, meeting with an array of people who were delusional, hallucinatory and suicidal.
Over time, she deepened her studies of the disorder, contributed to a book on treating schizophrenia, wrote a dissertation on stalkers and became a clinical psychologist. But not since she became part of the lawsuit in 2000 against her uncle has she spoken in detail about what she sees as the disorders of Donald Trump.
Now her silence could be coming to an end.
Her book about her uncle — “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” — is slated to be published next month. The book is so potentially explosive that the Trump family is seeking to block publication, citing a confidentiality agreement that Mary signed as part of a settlement about her inheritance.
Mary’s lawyer, Theodore Boutrous Jr., said the president is trying to “suppress a book that will discuss matters of utmost public importance.”
The publisher hasn’t revealed specifics, and Mary, 55, declined an interview request. But clues to her dark view of her uncle can be seen in lawsuits, interviews with former colleagues and teachers, academic papers and a series of now-deleted tweets, including one that said her uncle’s election was the “worst night of my life.”
A description of the book from publisher Simon & Schuster suggests it will draw heavily on her studies of family dysfunction, with Mary using her clinical background to dissect “a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse,” including “the strange and harmful relationship between” her late father and Donald Trump.
The tragedy to which the book description alludes probably is informed by an event that infused both her life and that of her uncle: the death of her father — President Trump’s older brother, Fred Jr. — of alcoholism when she was 16 years old.
Friends of her father’s said last year that they blame his death in part on the way he was treated by Donald Trump, and the president told the Post last year that he regrets how he dealt with his brother.
President Trump told Axios that he didn’t think his niece was allowed to write the book because she signed the confidentiality agreement. The White
House declined further comment.
Donald Trump’s brother Robert, who filed the petition to stop the book, said in the filing that Mary had agreed after accepting an unspecified financial settlement from the inheritance fight that she “would not publish any account” of her relationship with Donald Trump or his siblings.
In a statement, Robert said Mary’s decision to “mischaracterize our family relationship after all these years for her own financial gain is a travesty and injustice” to her late father, Fred Jr., and grandfather, Fred Sr., saying the family feels that “Mary’s actions are truly a disgrace.”
A Queens County Surrogate’s Court on Thursday denied the petition on grounds of lack of jurisdiction, but Robert’s attorney said it would be refiled with the New York State Supreme Court.