Donald Trumphas “never evolved” and “isn’t close with anybody”, according to Mary Trump, the US president’s niece and a vocal critic of his business and political career.
The daughter of Donald’s older brother, Fred Trump Jr (nicknamed Freddie), Mary Trump told the Hay festival in Wales – where she was discussing her latest book about the Trump family,Who Could Ever Love You– that she no longer has relationships with anyone in her family apart from her daughter.
She described herself as “the black sheep of the family”, calling her grandfather, Fred Trump, Donald’s father, “literally a sociopath”, and adding: “Cruelty is a theme in my family.”
She explained that much of her understanding of her uncle comes from when she was in her 20s and Donald hired her to ghostwrite his second book.
“I can’t say we got closer, because Donald isn’t close with anybody,” she said, but working with him for six months in his office, she got “a little bit more insight”.
“He is the only person I’ve ever met who’s never evolved, which is dangerous by the way,” she said. “Never choose as your leader somebody who’s incapable of evolving – that should be one of the lessons we’ve learned, for sure.”
She also described the president as “one of the most provincial people I know, and that does not serve us well, at all”.
Reading from her book, she described the moment a friend of her father’s, Anna Maria, met Donald for the first time. “When she first encountered Donald, he was a cocky, rude teenager, who was intensely jealous of his older brother, Freddie.
“Donald didn’t have any friends, so she felt sorry for him, but whenever they included him, they regretted it. Nobody in Freddie’s circle could bear to be around this arrogant, self-important, humorless kid.
“Over the years, Anna Maria watched Donald devolve into an even more arrogant adult with a widening, cruel streak.”
In the book she also recounts Donald throwing a baseball at his young nieces and nephews when he was in his 20s and she was eight years old. Her brother bought her a catcher’s mitt for Christmas one year, and she “realised it was probably to protect me from having every bone in my hand broken from Donald throwing a baseball at me as hard as he could”.
Mary also told audiences that after Donald’s older sister, Elizabeth, was born, doctors told his mother “that it would be very dangerous for her to have more children” because of her health issues. “She did, and the next one was Donald. About which I will say nothing more,” Mary joked.
His mother later became very ill, meaning Donald, “at a very crucial developmental period, did not have his primary caregiver, and the only person left was his dad, the sociopath. So you can imagine how that sort of changed the trajectory of Donald’s life.”
Mary is a psychologist whose previous books, Too Much and Never Enough and The Reckoning, also involve her uncle. She distanced herself from him around the time he began his first presidential term in 2017.
In 2021, the former president sued her for $100m for giving the New York Times information for its investigation into his finances. The lawsuit sends “a very clear message to me”, she said. “But what if everybody capitulates? Then what? Well, then we lose, and that’s unacceptable.”
She added that she does not “understand people who are afraid of Donald, because he’s so pathetic. I would be embarrassed to be afraid of him.”