Too Much and Never Enough
Biography & Autobiography
Simon & Schuster
July 14, 2020
Audiobook
240
Overdrive library loan
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.
Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.
A first-hand witness to countless holiday meals and family interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for re-gifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.
Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.
My review:
Oh you bet I went there and obtained an audio copy (narrated by the author) the day it was published! I have an irrational hatred of this man (I have what was written about in A Warning.....TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome!)! But honestly I wasn't expecting much from the book, other than a few tidbits that I could shake my head at, and would verify my opinions. It was a lot more than I expected. Mary is a very skilled writer (Donald hired her to write one of his books, but wouldn't ever sit down with her to give her any information to make it credible, so it fell through). The majority of the book is actually about the dysfunctional mess of a family they all grew up in! Fred was a sociopath, his wife was sickly and never paid attention to the five children, the oldest son (Mary's father) was shunned by Fred because he didn't want to go into the family business, and Donald (who did enter Daddy's business) was allowed to get away with anything without consequences. There is no question that Mary feels resentful of the way her father was treated, which she feels led to his alcoholism and early death, when Mary was just 16. I'm going to give her a pass on this as I felt it led more credibility to her story, what daughter wouldn't feel this way? However I never felt while listening that she was making up stuff to promote herself, or denigrate others, it was just the way the family dynamic played out. Interestingly the members of the family who were not part of the business seemed to fare better in life, as they got away from Fred's influence. An interesting couple of quotes that I'll share:
“His bragging is not really directed at the audience in front of him...but of his audience of one, his father”
“Donald today is as capable as he was at three years old....incapable of growing, learning or evolving, able to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information”
“Donald’s need for affirmation is so great that he doesn’t seem to notice that the largest group of his supporters are people he wouldn’t condescend to be seen with outside of a rally. His deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he’s soaked it in. Nothing is ever enough.”
Obviously the people who really should read this book are not going to, but it's a well written documentation of a family in crisis, and what the end result from that dysfunction can lead to. Please don't make us have to live with four more years of it!!
I've been so on the fence about reading this one. At the start of his term, I was devouring all the "tell all" books, but now I've become more disillusioned by them. We know he is crazy and unfit, so adding another voice to that consensus doesn't really change much. This one seems different in that it focusses on his personal life a bit more, so I may have to give it a read after all.
I thought it was well written, and more about the family until the last part, where she breaks down all Donald's faults. Interesting views coming from a psychologist.