WHITE HOUSE
Trump hits back at niece in attack on tell-all
authors
“About the only way a person is able to write a book
on me is if they agree that it will contain as much bad ‘stuff’ as possible,
much of which is lies,” the president wrote.
President Donald Trump on Saturday also went after
former national security adviser John Bolton and journalist Bob Woodward.
By EVAN
SEMONES
08/29/2020
02:07 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/29/trump-attack-mary-woodward-bolton-404911
President
Donald Trump on Saturday elevated his attacks on his niece while hitting those
who have written intimate — and often unflattering — portrayals of his family
life and the inner workings of his presidency.
“About the
only way a person is able to write a book on me is if they agree that it will
contain as much bad ‘stuff’ as possible, much of which is lies,” the president
wrote aboard Air Force One. “Even whether it’s … an unstable niece, who was now
rightfully shunned, scorned and mocked her entire life, and never even liked by
her own very kind & caring grandfather!"
Mary Trump
has spoken out against her uncle in a series of interviews after releasing a
tell-all book in July that characterized the president as a racist, serial liar
suffering from numerous personality disorders.
In an
interview with POLITICO shortly after the conclusion of the Republican National
Convention, Mary Trump said she considered the four-day event “disturbing” and
“law-breaking” and marked by a “breathtaking” torrent of lies.
“The extent
to which every, almost every single participant in this convention was willing
to lie, and knew they were lying, and didn’t care that pretty much everything
they said was a lie, was breathtaking,” she said.
Last week,
Mary Trump released secret recordings to the Washington Post that reportedly
captured the president’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, disparaging her brother.
Mary Trump
described her rationale behind sharing the recordings as a need to stop her uncle
from being re-elected in November.
“Because
we’re at this extraordinarily crucial point in this country’s history, and we
need to do everything,” she said. “Everything has to be put on the table.
Everything. And if I take a hit personally, so be it.”
President
Trump on Saturday also went after former national security adviser John Bolton
and journalist Bob Woodward as he traveled to tour devastation wrought by
Hurricane Laura in Louisiana and Texas, referring to them respectively as “a
dumb warmonger” and “a social pretender … who never has anything good to say.”
Bolton’s
highly anticipated book ripped the president for repeatedly endangering
national security, while Woodward is scheduled to release his second book on
the Trump presidency in September (Trump had previously praised Woodward's work
before he released his first book on the administration).
The
president departed Andrew Air Force Base with acting Homeland Security
Secretary Chad Wolf, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), White House Chief of Staff Mark
Meadows and White House counselor Hope Hicks at around 11 a.m. Saturday, bound
for Chennault International Airport in Lake Charles, La.
Magazine
2020
“Hateful” and “mendacious.” And that was just Don Jr.
and Ivanka’s speeches.
By MICHAEL
KRUSE
08/29/2020
06:30 AM EDT
Michael
Kruse is a senior staff writer at POLITICO and POLITICO Magazine.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/29/trump-niece-rnc-reaction-404676
It’s been a
month and a half since Donald Trump’s only niece released the bestselling book
in which she described the president as a “a narcissist,” “a petty, pathetic
little man,” “ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost in his own
delusional spin.”
Since then,
Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, has continued to up her profile in the
stretch run of this election as the only member of the president’s family who
has dramatically broken ranks. She has spoken to Joe Biden donors at an event
put on by a Biden-backing super PAC, headlined a fundraiser for the anti-Trump
Lincoln Project and shared with the Washington Post bombshell parts of 15 hours
of face-to-face conversations with her aunt that she secretly
recorded—transcripts and audio excerpts in which Maryanne Trump Barry, the
president’s oldest sister, called her brother phony, untrustworthy and “cruel.”
On Friday
afternoon, a little more than 12 hours after her uncle had capped the
Republican National Convention with a 70-minute speech on the South Lawn of the
White House, Mary Trump told me she considered the four-day event “disturbing”
and “law-breaking” and marked by a “breathtaking” torrent of lies. She
especially criticized her own cousins, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, whose
speeches she characterized as “hateful” and “mendacious,” respectively. “When a
family system arranges itself or organizes itself around the most deeply
damaged person in the family,” she said, referring to the president, “nothing
good comes of that.”
In her
book, she wrote that the reelection of Donald Trump “would be the end of
American democracy,” and so as a rattled America hurtles toward Election Day,
Mary Trump has decided she will play as large a role as possible in the effort
to topple the president.
“We’re at
this extraordinarily crucial point in this country’s history, and we need to do
everything,” she told me on Friday.
“Everything
has to be put on the table. Everything.” Does that mean the release of more
tapes? A spokesperson for her declined to comment.
Our
conversation has been edited lightly for clarity and length.
MICHAEL
KRUSE: What did you see? What did you hear? What stuck out?
MARY TRUMP:
The most jarring thing initially was the recognition that the entire convention
was a law-breaking enterprise. And people may say, ‘Oh, Hatch Act, not a big
deal,’ but it is a big deal. He co-opted or the Republican National Committee
co-opted the people’s house for their own political benefit. That’s not a small
thing. And when people say, ‘You know, nobody outside of the Beltway
cares’—well, people in the media say, nobody outside of the Washington Beltway
cares—well, maybe that’s because the media is telling them it’s not a big deal,
you know? So I found that just disturbing from the very beginning. Other than
that, though, just as a through-line, the extent to which every, almost every
single participant in this convention was willing to lie, and knew they were lying,
and didn’t care that pretty much everything they said was a lie, was
breathtaking.
KRUSE: I
think it’s fair to say that the most personal testimonials about the president
came from aides, employees and acquaintances, not his family, not his sons, not
his daughters, not his wife. Given your understanding of the family, given that
you are family, why is that?
TRUMP:
Because their relationships are all transactional and conditional. It is
interesting that there is this weird combination with my cousins of, you know,
formality and desperation. They’re constantly aware that they can’t put a foot
wrong or they’ll suffer some kind of consequences, but at the same time,
there’s this distance they keep by calling Donald their ‘father.’ There’s no
casualness at all to the way they speak about him. It’s very odd. But I think
at one point in their adult lives, they decided that, you know, they were
willing to enter into that transaction with him. In order for them to be in his
life, they were working for him, entirely dependent on him, and conceded their
own individuality and independence. And I guess that’s the deal they were
willing to make.
KRUSE: So,
some speakers, including family members—I’m thinking here of Ivanka in
particular—tried this week to soften his persona, tried to sand down aspects of
the man, suggesting essentially that, yes, he can be crass, he can be a loose
cannon, he can be a jerk, but he’s a jerk who gets stuff done. What do you make
of that sell?
TRUMP: On
the one hand, it’s absurd on its face to anybody who’s paying attention. On the
other hand, though, it’s very dangerous. And what I worry about is—particularly
in the case of Ivanka—her pitch may be more effective because it’s quieter,
it’s more moderated, while also being equally vicious and mendacious. I found
her entire speech deeply disturbing, but there’s that aspect of it. And I felt
similarly, in a totally different context, about Richard Grenell’s speech—that
it was a lie from beginning to end, but it wasn’t this unhinged screaming,
yelling tirade. He was just calmly lying to everybody about our intelligence
community, Donald’s foreign policy, Joe Biden.
KRUSE: Was
Ivanka’s speech, in your estimation, a lie from beginning to end, too?
TRUMP: I
can’t say that with complete certainty because she was talking about anecdotes
that I would not have been privy. I’ve never been in the Oval Office with him
and his grandchildren, for example, so ...
KRUSE: More
generally, do you agree with what seems to be the conventional wisdom that
Ivanka has been and remains his most effective surrogate?
TRUMP:: I
don’t know exactly—I mean, certainly not with the base, but he doesn’t need
anybody to be effective for him with the base. And even if he did, [his son]
Donny’s got that covered because he rants, he’s hateful, and he hates all the
right people, and, you know, he’ll literally say anything, at a high volume, to
ramp them up. With people slightly outside of the base, who may still be
convinced one way or the other, that’s potentially true. Sometimes, though, it’s
hard for me to evaluate these things—because, as with Donald, I look at her, I
look at him, and I don’t see anything admirable about either one of them, so
I’m completely mystified why anybody would be taken in by it.
KRUSE:
Let’s talk about Don, and Eric, too. What have you seen over the course of the
last handful of years, or before, that we should know about the dynamic between
the two of them and how it informs their relationships with their father?
TRUMP:
They’re much younger than I am, so my main experience of them was on holidays
and they wrestled a lot, like pummeled each other into the ground, while Donald
just like sat in a chair and stepped on them occasionally.
KRUSE: A
scene from the book that I recall.
TRUMP:
There’s a desperation to Donny that I don't see in Eric.
KRUSE: And
why do you think that is?
TRUMP: I
think there are two possibilities. One is that Donny still thinks that he has a
chance to gain his father’s favor and will do anything to do so—not sure
why—and Eric, maybe, knows there is no chance. And so why bother? You know, I
think that’s the most likely possibility, to tell the truth.
KRUSE: So,
at the risk of oversimplifying, you portray the family, your family—starting
with your grandfather, the president’s father, and his wife, and their five
children—as deeply wounded damaged, troubled, “malignantly dysfunctional.” How
did you see it play out over these last four days?
TRUMP: I
guess the simplest way of putting it is that Donald continues to be this vortex
that kind of sucks in attention. I think in the book I refer to him as ‘a black
hole of need.’ And just as his family of origin organized itself around him,
his family now, his children, seem to be playing the same role. And when a
family system arranges itself or organizes itself around the most deeply
damaged person in the family, nothing good comes of that. We see the same thing
with the Republican Party. I know it sounds reductive, but it actually seems to
be playing out that way—and it’s quite terrifying.
KRUSE:
Robert, the president’s little brother, died coming up on two weeks ago. And
the president in his statement that day said Robert was his “best friend.” Was
he?
TRUMP: No.
No. They, when I knew them—well, not the whole time—but after Robert rather
abruptly left the Trump Organization, they hated each other. There was no love
lost. And from what I understand, it wasn’t until Donald started running, or
secured the nomination, that Robert, for purely opportunistic reasons, kind of
got back in with Donald—and, like everything else in the family, it was
transactional and it was mutually beneficial in whatever way. I also question
Donald’s capacity to have deep, close friendships, anyway—but I don’t think
that that’s at all true. In fact, if that had been the case, then Donald
probably should have been with his second brother who was dying in a hospital.
KRUSE: Sort
of a replay of his older brother, in a way, right?
TRUMP: Not
as bad, of course, because Robert had a wife and stepchildren who hopefully
were with him. You know, I’ve seen people say you can’t criticize somebody,
everybody grieves differently, and the truth is Robert wasn’t dead yet. Donald
could have been with him. He wasn’t grieving when he was playing golf. Robert
was still dying when he was playing golf. So, yeah, I don’t think he gets let
off the hook for that.
KRUSE: Have
you talked to your Aunt Maryanne in the last week?
TRUMP: No—I
haven’t spoken to her since late January 2019.
KRUSE: What
went into your decision to share with the Post that recorded audio of
face-to-face conversations you had with her in ’18, and I think ‘19, too,
right?
TRUMP: Yep.
Because we’re at this extraordinarily crucial point in this country’s history,
and we need to do everything. We need to do absolutely everything. Everything
has to be put on the table. Everything. And if I take a hit personally, so be
it. We can’t pull any punches. And if I can encourage other people to reveal
information they have—that might make them uncomfortable—then it’s worth it.
Because people are still confused about the character of this man. I’m not sure
why, but they are. So if his sister, who’s known him his entire life, says
definitively these things about him, I’m hoping that people will listen in a
way they’re not going to listen to people who haven’t known him as well or as
long.
KRUSE: What
in your estimation are the most important things that your aunt said in those
15 hours? In other words, what do you want people to know about your uncle, the
president, heading into the last couple months of this election?
TRUMP: That
he cares about nobody but himself. That he has no loyalty to anybody. And that
he will use anybody for his own purposes and lie to them about his motives. Oh,
and of course that he’s cruel, which should be self-evident—but I think it has
more power coming from his sister.
KRUSE: Is
there any part of you that’s concerned that, while what you did is legal, it’s
also somewhat sneaky, or could be seen that way, and then it could undercut
your voice or your credibility, even for people who are more inclined to agree
with you and to not like the president and to not want to support the
president?
TRUMP:
Yeah—of course I was concerned about that. But it doesn’t change what she said.
And I know what my motives were. And I am—well, comfortable is the wrong word,
and don’t get me wrong, I took no pleasure in this, at all—but I know why I did
it. And other people? I completely understand why other people might think it
was wrong or worse. But if they knew why, then I think they might change their
minds—but either way, it doesn’t matter. What matters is what she said, and
what anybody thinks of my behavior doesn’t change what she said, so it was
worth the risk to me—because this is too important. I mean, our country’s on a
knife-edge right now, so anything I can do to push us to the right side is what
I’m going to do.
KRUSE: Last
question. You’ve joined forces with, among other people, Tony Schwartz to help
a pro-Biden PAC. Is that part and parcel with what you were just saying about
the importance of this election, and what you can do to make sure it goes, in
your view, the right way?
TRUMP: I’m
doing various things with a lot of people. Whatever is most effective: If
somebody thinks that my doing a fundraiser with Tony is helpful, fine; if
somebody thinks that my doing something with the Lincoln Project is effective,
fine. But I’m not technically joining forces with anybody. I am going to make
decisions going forward to see how I can be most effective. And if that means
doing something with somebody else, fine. And if it means doing something by
myself, fine. And we’re just going to have to see how this plays out, because
we’re still a ways out—and it’s important for me to figure out how to marshal
my resources so they have the most impact.
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