Page 15 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

had always been, while he continued to get away with—and even be rewarded for—increasingly crass, irresponsible, and despicable behavior. This can’t possibly be happening again, I thought. But it was.
The media failed to notice that not one member of Donald’s family, apart from his children, his son-in-law, and his current wife said a word in support of him during the entire campaign. Maryanne told me she was lucky because, as a federal judge, she needed to maintain her objectivity. She may have been the only person in the country, given her position as his sister and her professional reputation, who, if she had spoken out about Donald’s complete unfitness for the office, might have made a difference. But she had her own secrets to keep, and I wasn’t entirely surprised when she told me after the election that she’d voted for her brother out of “family loyalty.”
Growing up in the Trump family, particularly as Freddy’s child, presented certain challenges. In some ways I’ve been extremely fortunate. I attended excellent private schools and had the security of first-rate medical insurance for much of my life. There was also, though, a built-in sense of scarcity that applied to all of us, except Donald. After my grandfather died in 1999, I learned that my father’s line had been erased from the will as if Fred Trump’s oldest son had never existed, and a lawsuit followed. In the end, I concluded that if I spoke publicly about my uncle, I would be painted as a disgruntled, disinherited niece looking to cash in or settle a score.
In order to understand what brought Donald—and all of us—to this point, we need to start with my grandfather and his own need for recognition, a need that propelled him to encourage Donald’s reckless hyperbole and unearned confidence that hid Donald’s pathological weaknesses and insecurities.
As Donald grew up, he was forced to become his own cheerleader, first, because he needed his father to believe he was a better and more confident son than Freddy was; then because Fred required it of him; and finally because he began to believe his own hype, even as he paradoxically suspected on a very deep level that nobody else did. By the time of the election, Donald met any challenges to his sense of superiority with anger, his fear and vulnerabilities so effectively buried that he didn’t even have to acknowledge they existed. And he never would.