If I could interview Donald Trump, this is what I’d ask him

Writer Molly Jong-Fast is best known for being a commentator on US politics. She is also the daughter of Erica Jong, the author of the 1970s feminist tome Fear of Flying. Here, the 46-year-old discusses the important men in her life, including her grandfather, Howard Fast, who wrote Spartacus.

Molly Jong-Fast has written a memoir about growing up as the daughter of author Erica Jong.Credit: Philip Vukelich/Redux/Headpress

My paternal grandfather, Howard Fast, wrote Spartacus as well as 80 other published books. One of my favourite things about him was that he was smart and disciplined. He would wake up at 5am and you’d hear the typewriter going. He was very much a product of the Charles Dickens’ paid-by-the-word kind of writing.

He went to prison for three months in 1950 for his communist beliefs. In his memoir, he said everything that was bad about him – like cheating on my grandmother, Bette, a sculptor, with whom I was very close – was not in his FBI file.

My father Jonathan, a writer and later a social work professor, and my mother Erica Jong [author of Fear of Flying], were introduced by my grandfather. They moved from California to Connecticut, where I was born. When I was three, they had a bad divorce. My mother moved out and left me with the nanny. After that, I’d see Dad every other weekend. Then, a year later, I went to live with Mum in New York.

I am like my father as we both have red hair. We both get motion sickness and both have big feet.

I was a bad teenager and very entitled. Drugs, drinking and blacking out were my focus at high school in the Bronx. I got along with boys OK. I wasn’t uncomfortable, but I wasn’t super comfortable either.

My first celebrity crush was Jay McInerney. I was in that generation that thought he and the literary brat-pack that also included Bret Easton Ellis were the coolest.

Mum married four times and had numerous fiances. She looked for someone to save her, and to get her out of her own head. I kept meeting these men and thinking they were going to be my father and then they were not. I liked some of them better than the ones she ended up with.

I am the daughter and granddaughter of alcoholics. But I am so different to my mum because I got sober when I was 19, and so I didn’t ever have to be, or didn’t want to be, her.

I was 11 when Mum married my stepfather, Ken, a former divorce lawyer. We lived in Ken’s apartment in New York until they bought another in the same building. Ken never had his own kids; he did some really nice things for me. Step-parenting is really tough but we got along. He really did love me and was good to me, but it was hard.

Ken started exhibiting early signs of Parkinson’s in his 70s. When he died in 2023, it was horrible for my mother. She has dementia, so it was difficult for her to process.

I met my husband, Matt, on the internet back when people didn’t do that. I was 23 and he was 37. He thought I was too young, but we met and fell madly in love. He moved in right afterwards.

I knew that if you marry someone much older than you, they might get sick, but I didn’t see Matt getting pancreatic cancer at 59. He’s had surgery and is good now. We have two sons – one in his early 20s and one in his late teens. They are both good people.

During the pandemic, I took up political podcasting. What I’ve observed from interviewing high-ranking men in American politics is that the Democrats are too polite; they don’t know how to tell each other when to retire. It’s killing the party.

If I could interview Donald Trump I would ask, “What’s your end game? Is it to be [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán or [Russian President Vladimir] Putin?” But Trump is not as smart as Putin. I would ask Trump where he gets his information. Is it Fox News? But I don’t think he’d answer that, as that answer is part of the problem.

How to Lose Your Mother (Picador) by Molly Jong-Fast is out June 10.

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