Mary Trump book: Donald Trump’s brother tried to stop its release

A tell-all book written by Donald Trump’s niece will be released in a matter of hours. The President’s family desperately tried to stop it.

US President Donald Trump is bracing for the release of his niece’s tell-all book, which his family tried and failed to stop.

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man will be published on July 14, weeks ahead of its original release date, due to “popular demand”.

It promises to be explosive, and potentially embarrassing for Mr Trump, with this year’s general election looming in a few short months.

The book’s author is Mary Trump, 55, a clinical psychologist whose father, Fred Jr, was the President’s older brother. As the title suggests, it is not a flattering portrayal.

RELATED: Stunning claims emerge from Mary Trump’s upcoming book

“Today, Donald is much as he was at three years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesise information,” the blurb says.

That gives you some idea of what to expect.

Mary Trump.

While delivering a withering assessment of Mr Trump, Dr Trump appears to place much of the blame for who he is on his father, Fred Trump Sr.

“Child abuse is, in some sense, a matter of ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’. Donald’s mother became ill when he was two-and-a-half, suddenly depriving him of his main source of comfort and human contact. His father, Fred became his only available parent,” she writes.

“But Fred firmly believed that dealing with young children was not his duty, and he kept to his twelve-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week job at Trump Management, as if his children could look after themselves.

“From the beginning, Fred’s self-interest skewed his priorities, and his care of his children reflected his own needs, not theirs. He could not empathise with Donald’s plight, so his son’s fears and longings went unsoothed.

“Love meant nothing to Fred; he expected obedience, that was all. Over time, Donald became afraid that asking for comfort or attention would provoke his father’s anger or indifference when Donald was most vulnerable.”

She says Mr Trump came to be totally dependent on “a caregiver who also caused him terror”, and as a result, “suffered deprivations that would scar him for life”.

That is just what’s on the book’s cover. Soon the world will be able to read what’s inside it.

DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO STOP THE BOOK

The Trump family, led by the President’s brother Robert, has tried to block the book’s publication, arguing it violates a nondisclosure agreement Dr Trump signed all the way back in 2001.

That agreement ended a long-running and very public dispute over Fred Sr’s estate.

As recently as last Tuesday, the family’s lawyer Charles Harder was pushing a judge in New York to intervene.

“This case is not about the First Amendment,” Mr Harder wrote, referring to the constitutional amendment protecting Americans’ right to freedom of speech.

“It is a case about family members who agreed to settle multiple hotly contested and publicised court cases by agreeing not to discuss those cases or their relationships with each other in public, including writing a memoir or a book containing such discussions.”

He accused Dr Trump and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, of trying to “cash in on her relationships”.

Dr Trump’s own lawyer, Ted Boutrous, has argued that her relatives already violated the settlement agreement, and that it was invalid anyway because it was based on incorrect valuations of Fred Sr’s estate.

“My uncle, the President, has spoken out about our family and the will dispute on numerous occasions,” Dr Trump said in a court filing.

That argument is largely academic anyway.

At the start of July, the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division lifted an order from a lower court judge that would have prevented Simon & Schuster from distributing the book. Review copies have already been distributed to reporters, and it will go on sale in a matter of hours.

A restraining order is still in place against Dr Trump herself, meaning as things stand she cannot, for instance, conduct a TV interview.

The book does not cast Donald Trump in a flattering light. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

THE REVELATIONS WE ALREADY KNOW ABOUT

US media publications have published previews of the book over the last week, revealing some of the revelations inside.

Here is a selection of the more striking examples.

Trump’s father accused of child abuse

According to The Washington Post, Dr Trump claims the President’s father “destroyed” him psychologically at a young age by short-circuiting his “ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotion”.

“By limiting Donald’s access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son’s perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it,” she writes.

Dr Trump says Donald had “plenty of time to learn from watching Fred humiliate” his older brother – and her own father – Fred Jr, who died after a battle with alcoholism in 1981 at the age of 42.

“Having his father not only fail to meet his needs but to make him feel safe or loved, valued or mirrored, Donald suffered deprivations that would scar him for life,” Dr Trump says.

She labels Fred Sr a “high-functioning sociopath”.

‘Cheating as a way of life’

The book includes a damning claim that Mr Trump paid someone to take the university admission exam, the SAT, on his behalf.

The President has often bragged about the fact that he went to the prestigious Wharton School of Business, from which he claimed a bachelor’s degree in 1968.

Dr Trump alleges her uncle only got into the school because he cheated, and went on to embrace “cheating as a way of life”, according to The New York Times.

The night of Fred Jr’s death

On the night of Fred Jr’s death in 1981, Dr Trump says, the Trump family sent him to hospital alone.

Meanwhile, the future president went to see a movie.

Mr Trump has previously cited his older brother’s struggle with alcoholism as a key reason why he himself doesn’t drink. And in an interview with The Washington Post last year, he confessed he regretted scolding Fred Jr over his career choices.

“I do regret having put pressure on him,” he said, acknowledging the family business was “just something (Fred Jr) was never going to want” to go into.

“It was just not his thing,” Mr Trump continued.

“I think the mistake that we made was we assumed that everybody would like it. That would be the biggest mistake … there was a sort of double pressure put on him.”

Scathing assessment of Trump’s sister

Mr Trump’s sister is Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal judge. Dr Trump claims she spoke to her aunt during Mr Trump’s presidential run in 2015-16.

“He’s a clown,” Maryanne reportedly said, deriding her brother as a “faded reality star”.

“This will never happen.”

Not a great prediction, but she was hardly alone in making it.

Maryanne also had a go at Mr Trump for pretending to be religious to win evangelical votes.

“The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there,” she said.

“It’s mind-boggling. But that’s all about his base. He has no principles. None!”

Trump labelled a ‘narcissist’

Dr Trump claims her uncle meets all nine clinical criteria for narcissism. But she says even that does not fully capture what’s going on in his head.

“The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviours 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,” she concludes, according to The New York Times.

“Donald’s ego has been and is a fragile and inadequate barrier between him and the real world which, thanks to his father’s money and power, he never had to negotiate by himself.”

Mr Trump himself has yet to respond to the book. Picture: Eric Baradat/AFP

‘A BOOK OF FALSEHOODS’

So, there are some pretty heavy allegations there. According to the White House, they’re all nonsense.

Speaking to reporters last week, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany labelled it a “book of falsehoods”.

“She’s a criminal psychologist, says the President is narcissistic, lying as a means of self-aggrandisement, all sorts of allegations. Your response to that on his behalf?” asked NBC reporter Peter Alexander.

“It’s ridiculous. Absurd allegations that have absolutely no bearing in truth,” Ms McEnany responded.

“I have yet to see the book, but it is a book of falsehoods.”

Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway offered a similar response.

“I believe family matters should be family matters. I think the think-skinned, troubled, living-in-a-glass-house mainstream media members who think people’s families are their business ought to really think thrice the next time they do that,” Ms Conway said.

“This is like every other book out there,” she said.

“We imbue instant credibility unto anybody, especially those not under oath and writing works of fiction – or fiction within a work of fiction – as long as they’re out there to get the President.

“I think reporters ought to focus on getting the story and not the President.”

YEARS OF BAD BLOOD

The bad blood between Mary and Donald Trump goes back decades.

Fred Jr was the eldest son of Fred Sr, and initially, the heir to the family empire. But he did not wish to pursue a career in real estate or business. Instead, he became a pilot.

Dr Trump’s book includes allegations that Fred Sr and Donald “contributed” to her father’s death through their treatment of him. She claims the pair “neglected him at critical stages of his addiction”.

However, the greater source of her antipathy towards Mr Trump can be traced back to the aftermath of Fred Sr’s death in 1999.

The Trump patriarch’s will left the vast majority of his estate to his four living children – Donald, Maryanne, Robert and Elizabeth.

Mary Trump and her brother, Fred III, were treated the same way as Fred Sr’s other grandchildren, who each got $200,000.

They filed a legal objection, saying they were entitled to a fifth of the estate – the share their late father, Fred Jr, would have received if he were still alive. They claimed Fred Sr had only signed the final version of his will because of “fraud and undue influence” from Donald, Maryanne and Robert.

At the time, Fred III had a young son, William. The child suffered from a rare disorder called infantile spasms, which could lead to seizures, cerebral palsy and autism. He needed an immense amount of medical care.

Mr Trump and his siblings responded to the legal challenge by cutting Fred III off from the family’s medical benefits – and by extension, ditching William as well.

“When (Fred) sued us, we said, ‘Why should we give him medical coverage?’” the future president told The New York Daily News in 2000.

The paper asked him whether he thought the move could look cold-hearted, “given the young child’s medical condition”.

“I can’t help that,” Mr Trump said.

“It’s cold when someone sues my father. Had (Fred III) come to see me, things could very possibly have been much different for them.”

“I was angry because they sued,” Mr Trump explained again, this time to The New York Times, during the 2016 campaign.

Fred III did have the means to continue caring for William, who was quickly diagnosed with cerebral palsy. But Mary Trump in particular was furious.

“My aunt and uncles should be ashamed of themselves. I’m sure they are not,” she told The Daily News in 2000.