Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump

 

An old friend of mine worked at one of the Trump buildings, back when gullible Americans were fawning over Trump’s reality tv show. How was it? He describes Trump’s head chef taunting him with racist jokes, and Matthew Calimari (Trump’s gigantic head of security turned head of operations) intimidating everyone. Intimidating? Calimaria (a rather large man, btw) would turn to employee #1 and say, “You gonna train him?” The lackey would say, “Mister Calimari, you know I always give you my best.” The big man would turn to lackey #2 and say, “What’re you gonna do?” The big man, with his big moustache, would get the same answer, then call you to his office to make you wait. Regardless of what you were there for, he’d make you wait as a matter of policy. Now I have to wonder, why is everyone in the Trump corporation such an asshole? Why are they always looking for ways to make themselves feel powerful? Does Donald Trump hire bullies? I wonder how he kept his machine going. Why did bans keep lending him money? Why did the TV networks shower him with attention? The author, Trump’s niece, makes that clear in the prologue: How did Donald Trump get away with it for so long?

Mary Trump holds nothing back in her disdain for her family. She describes her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr, as an abusive racist and a male chauvinist, and her grandmother, a poor Scottish immigrant, as selfish and classist. But she also makes her grandmother look weak and incompetent. Did her grandfather, an abusive domineering man, find himself attracted to Mrs. Trump’s fragility? Then there’s her father, Fred Trump Jr, who she describes as weak and incompetent as well. After college, he worked for his father in property management, but found that it didn’t suit him. He joined the Air National Guard, became a pilot for TWA, and found himself rebelling against his father. Pilots were held in high regard in the 1960’s, but Trump Sr. considered them nothing more than bus drivers. You would think that this man would laugh off his father’s criticism, but he didn’t. Fred Trump Jr. really took it to heart, even worse when his younger brother Donald was sent to deliver the message from their father. Soon Fred Jr.’s drinking worsened, he lost his TWA job, fell back in with his father, and was treated like dirt for the rest of his life.

You would think Fred Jr.’s wife would say, “Screw your father, stick with flying,” but the man was so weak that he couldn’t resist the pull of his father’s black hole. For the rest of his life, it would be low-level positions, managing his father’s low-quality buildings in Queens, living in the building’s worst apartments, dying broken and alone. Mary Trump speculates that her grandfather, in typically hateful Trump fashion, kept her father from getting loans to buy a home or start a business. Whether or not it’s true, it seems as though Fred Sr. enjoyed watching his son fail. Why would he trash his son’s career as a pilot, when the country’s elite (which Fred Sr. fancied himself a part of) considered it a top-dog life? Why would he insist on his son returning to the family business, if all he would let his son do was be a building superintendent? Perhaps Fred Sr. needed a weak son to abuse so that he could feel powerful?

There is a possible reason for the failure of Fred Jr’s career, not mentioned in the book. Fred Jr. was an Air National Guard pilot, who’d never flown in combat, or even been in the service full-time, so he would’ve been very low on the pilot totem pole. The airlines recruited from the Air Force and Navy first, then the Air National Guard, then the flying school. Did he feel disrespected by his fellow pilots, most of whom had probably flown in the Korean War? Was he relegated to local flights, while the military veterans flew across the Atlantic? There’s a scene in the story where Donald and Robert Trump spend the weekend at their brother’s house, and they disrespect not only their older brother, but his wife too. Why was it tolerated? Why couldn’t Fred Jr. just say, “Are you both nuts? Are you out of your minds?” Something was clearly wrong with this man.

Fortunately, Mary Trump had a decent life. She was at boarding school when her father died and hadn’t seen him much in those years. She disregarded her grandfather, who didn’t want her going to college. She had a good career as a psychologist, distanced herself from her uncle, and fought with him over her grandfather’s will.

After reading this book, I noticed something about Trump that I find disturbing. America’s great millionaires all had interesting hobbies, like JP Morgan’s book collecting, and Nelson Rockefeller’s fascination with art, among others. Trump, however, does nothing with his leisure time besides play golf and watch TV. Then there’s philanthropy: all of the great millionaires – Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Pratt, Whitney, Guggenheim, Cooper, and Hewett – built colleges and museums. But what did Trump endow? Nothing!

When interviewed about this book, her aunt Elizabeth reminisced about what a bad girl Mary Trump was, showing up to her grandfather’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in jeans and a sweater. Was Donald Trump’s niece, cut off from the family circle, the only one tough enough to say no? Was she the only one who had the guts to look her grandfather in the eye and say no to him? It reminds me of the story of the Finnish prime minister, who had lunch with Hitler, and knowing Hitler detested smoking, lit a cigarette in Hitler’s presence. It was an open disregard for a domineering bully, and in similar fashion, Mary Trump knew exactly what little, trivial things, insignificant as they may seem, would piss off a selfish man. I bet nobody forgave her.