Page 93 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

case. There was no admission of wrongdoing, but they did have to change their rental practices to avoid discrimination. Even so, both Cohn and Donald considered it a win because of all the press coverage.
When Donald hitched his fortunes to the likes of Roy Cohn, the only things he had going for him were Fred’s largesse and a carefully cultivated but delusional belief in his own brilliance and superiority. Ironically, the defenses he had developed as a young child to protect himself against the indifference, fear, and neglect that had defined his early years, along with his being forced to watch the abuse of Freddy, primed him to develop what his older brother clearly lacked: the ability to be the “killer” and proxy his father required.
There’s no way to know precisely when Fred started to notice Donald, but I suspect it was after he shipped his son off to military school. Donald seemed amenable to his father’s exhortations to be tough, a “killer,” and he proved his worth by bragging about the random beatings he received from the upperclassmen or pretending not to care about his exile from home. Fred’s growing confidence in Donald created a bond between them and an unshakable self-confidence in Donald. After all, the most important person in the family, the only one whose opinion mattered, was finally showing him favor. And unlike Freddy, the attention Donald received from his father was positive.
After college, when Donald was finally out in the world using his father’s connections to make more connections and using his father’s money to create his image as a burgeoning Master of the Universe, Fred knew that anything his son got credit for would redound to his own benefit. After all, if Donald was embraced as an up-and-coming dealmaker, that was entirely to the credit of Fred Trump—even if Fred was the only person who knew it.
In interviews in the early 1980s, Fred claimed that Donald’s success had far exceeded his own. “I gave Donald free rein,” he said. “He has great visions, and everything he touches seems to turn to gold. Donald is the smartest person I know.” None of that was true, and Fred must have known that a decade before he said it.
After Steeplechase, Fred had lost a lot of ground. If he wanted to expand the reach of his empire, he would need a new playing field and a surrogate. He needed Donald to go out in the world and create the brand. It hadn’t taken Fred long to realize that his profligate middle son wasn’t suited to the