Uncle Donald used n-world, according to nephew’s book

Fred Trump III’s book claims uncle used the n-word in the 1970s and suggested some disabled people should ‘just die’

The five Trump siblings with, from left to right, Robert, Elizabeth, Fred Jnr, Donald and Maryanne. Picture: Donald Trump campaign

A nephew of Donald Trump has claimed he heard the former president use the n-word during his days as a New York property developer.

In his upcoming memoir, Fred Trump III, 61, alleges that “Uncle Donald” used the racist slur after discovering a 60cm-long gash in the soft-top of his beloved Cadillac Eldorado convertible in the early 1970s.

Even though Donald Trump could not have known who had slashed his car, he “disgustedly” used the n-word to describe those he thought responsible, Fred Trump writes.

“I knew that was a bad word,” Fred Trump, who was a “pre-teen” at the time, writes in All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, according to a copy obtained by The Guardian. Donald Trump, 78, would have been in his late 20s at the time.

Race is expected to play a role in the presidential election – Mr Trump is all but certain to face Kamala Harris, the Vice-President who is of Jamaican and Indian descent – but allegations of racism have followed Mr Trump throughout his life.

In 2018, Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former aide in the Trump White House, said that he had used the n-word several times during the making of The Apprentice, his reality TV show. Bill Pruitt, a former producer on The Apprentice, made a similar claim in a recent essay published in Slate.

Mr Trump has previously denied the allegations. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Mary Trump, Fred’s sister, wrote in her 2020 bestselling memoir Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, that her uncle was “clearly racist”. She claimed that it was “normal” to hear her uncle use racist and anti-Semitic slurs growing up.

Fred and Mary, 59, are the children of Fred Trump Jr, Donald’s eldest brother, who died of a heart attack in 1981 at the age of 42.

In a separate memoir excerpt published by Time, Fred described meeting Donald in May 2020 to discuss his son William, who was born with the genetic mutation KCNQ2.

Fred wrote that he had maintained a good relationship with his uncle after his 2016 presidential victory and hoped to use his access to the White House to improve healthcare for disabled children.

During the 45-minute Oval Office meeting, he thought his uncle had been “touched” by what doctors and disability advocates had said about experiences with their patients and family members.

“But I was wrong,” he writes in All In The Family, which is due for release on July 30. He quoted Trump as saying: “Those people … the shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

Fred also cites a 1973 lawsuit brought by the Justice Department alleging Mr Trump, his father and the family firm had racially discriminated against black people in housing developments.

“This was a painful period for the company and therefore for Donald,” Fred wrote. “The ‘r’ word – racist – was thrown around.” Donald Trump counter-sued and the case was settled two years later with no admission of guilt.

According to its publisher, Simon & Schuster, All in the Family promises to be a “candid and revealing memoir” that “shines a light into the darker corners of the Trump empire”.

The book delves into the “win-at-all-costs” mentality of Trump’s father and business mentor, Fred Trump Sr, the publisher said. It also explores the racial dynamics of Queens, the New York borough where Donald Trump was raised.

Fred Trump III writes that, in the 1960s and 1970s, Queens was rife with people saying “all kinds of crude, thoughtless, prejudiced things”.

“Maybe everyone in Queens was a racist then,” he writes.

THE TIMES