So, I read the book "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" by Mary Trump, who is Donald Trump's niece. Given she's a clinical psychologist with the inside scoop on the Trump family, I figured it might be good to see an inside look at how Donald ticked.
In that sense, I found the book...underwhelming. Essentially, the book comes off more as an autobiography with some extra emphasis on Donald. It was more a focus on the internal family dynamics of the Trump family, and how they enabled his worse impulses to make him have the volatile and incompetent attitude that he had.
The story starts back in the 1940s, when the Trump children were born, and much of the book is actually about Donald's father, Fred Trump. Fred was, much like Donald later was, into real estate, and had a multi million dollar empire spanning New York City. He was kind of the stereotypical capitalist landlord, always pinching pennies, and doing the bare minimum for his residents. He had five children, although the story primarily focuses on two of them: Freddy Trump (Fred Trump Jr) and Donald Trump. Freddy was actually the oldest male child, and and Fred tried to groom him into the heir of the Trump franchise. But...he never stacked up to what Fred wanted. He has passions outside of real estate and making money, and was quite frankly more honest of a person than Fred accepted. Fred himself was a sociopath. He ruled over his family with an iron fist, was not a caring person at all, and threatened to disinherit any person in his family who didn't toe the family line. It's weird, for me, money is freedom, and having a lot of it gives you a lot of freedom, but Fred so tightly controlled it that he held it over all of his family members. Basically do what you're told and know your place or you're out.
As Freddy got older, he started distancing himself from the family, wanting to be financially independent of them, and tried his hand being a commercial pilot, which incensed his father, who saw him as a glorified bus driver in the sky. Freddy got older, he developed an alcoholism habit, potentially as a way of coping with the stresses of his family, which imploded his airline career. He tried to go back to real estate, and his father put him in a no win situation in which his venture was destined to fail, simply due to the systemic hurdles necessary to succeed. After that, he just fell apart. His alcoholism drove him deeper and deeper into a hole, his family didn't take care of him and he didn't care, and his marriage failed as well. Mary is his daughter, and remembers some of the stuff, but her father died when she was still relatively young, from heart issues related to his alcoholism.
As for Donald, well...he kind of read the room early on, and decided to be the anti Freddy. Whatever Freddy was, he did the opposite, trying to curry his father's favor. He was actually a little sociopath and was extremely aggressive and bullied his siblings relentlessly, trying to establish himself at the top of the hierarchy and gain favor with his father. He was so aggressive and so bad they actually sent him to a military boarding school in order to straighten him out, and while this worked externally, it didn't work internally.
As things fell through for Freddy, Donald jumped in to fill the gap. He would be that perfect son for his father who was sociopathic and into real estate, etc., and his father enabled him. He was never really a successful businessman, but he put a good face on the front of the Trump brand, and his father could use him to expand his empire. I remember always hearing from my mom during the 2016 election cycle that Trump would always be on top of the world, he would go bankrupt one week and the next he'd be living golden again. Yeah, because as this book points out, his dad bailed him out many times over the course of his life. He wasnt a good business person. He actually sucked at it and cost his family money. He built too many casinos in Atlantic city to the point they were in competition with each other and couldnt make a profit as a result. And his father tried pumping money into them too. Which resulted in quite a few fines back in the day.
And then as Fred got older he developed dementia, and Donald manipulated him to change the will. Other siblings stepped in and stopped him, but still, when he finally died, Freddy's entire line of the family was disinherited, including the author. It actually led to a lot of nasty legal battles within the family, and broke relations between the author and them since. And while they were later repaired somewhat, well, writing this book probably broke them again. The family only cared about money. They had little to no love for each other. They didn't seem to know what love was. They were always trying to screw each other it seems, and as a result, Freddy, being the black sheep of the family, had their line basically disinherited from the rest of it.
And while Mary herself turned out relatively well adjusted, all things considered, Donald was always the family at its worst. He inherited Fred's worst characteristics, without having any of the business sense. THe dude was never as successful as he was propped up to be. He was just propped up. He was terrible at making deals. Word is after he inherited his father's empire he sold it for far less than market value and pocketed the money. He was also regularly in trouble with the banks due to his poor business ventures, and through all of this, he was always enabled. Despite failing constantly, he always failed upward and was always rewarded for his efforts whether he succeeded or not.
And then we voted to give this guy the nuclear codes. Mary pointed out that all of Donald's malignant behavior and poor leadership is due to lifelong behavioral patterns. The dude never failed, couldn't admit to ever failing, because that's what Freddy would do, and he had to be the opposite of his brother. Freddy was an honest decent person who admitted to his failures, and his father hated him for it, but Donald's mentality of always being a winner even when you lose stayed with him over the course of his life. And the dude just CAN'T handle being a loser. SO he double, triples down, he refuses to admit he was wrong, and he digs himself deeper into a hole, just like he did with COVID.
While I found the book to be an interesting expose into Donald Trump's mindset, I didn't quite expect it to be as family history heavy. I guess it makes sense since family history influences behavioral patterns, but I thought the book would be based more on him and his behavior.
And while Mary did make a sequel to this book called The Reckoning, it seems to be more into her own political views, which, based on my quick research, sound cringe. She's a full on Hillary supporting SJW who acts like the biggest problem with society in general is white supremacy and that racism is the original sin we must atone for and blah blah blah.
And for me, that's kind of cringe. Like I get it, systemic racism is real, but this weird postmodernist religion some on the left fall into makes me cringe hard. I think theres way more to politics than mere identity politics, and that we need a more broad approach to politics in general than that offers. We're never going to unite the nation if we keep promoting such a divisive approach to politics in general.
Anyway, the book was okay. I don't really have a ton to say about it. I mean, anyone who has been paying attention can tell that boy ain't all right. And while this goes into the whole mess that is his origin story, I mean, I feel like this could be summarized significantly. Even more so than I posted above. Basically, dad was a sociopath, raised him to be a sociopath, dude never had to take responsibility for his actions and was actively discouraged from doing so, and he was always bailed out by dear old dad when he failed, leading to a general motion of failing upward. And then we gave the dude nuclear codes despite him not being the person with the right leadership skills or temperament for the job. There's your summary.
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