Donald Trump a 'psychologically deeply damaged man' who is only going to get worse, says niece Mary
In a recent interview, President Donald Trump's niece Mary, who has written a scathing tell-all about him, said that her uncle's incapability to govern, especially amid a health crisis, could be traced back to his childhood experience.
"Donald is a psychologically deeply damaged man, based on his upbringing and the situation with his parents," she told CNN's Chris Cuomo on Friday, July 17, on 'Cuomo Prime Time.' "He is not going to get better and he is without question going to get worse."
Mary's comments came after her explosive book, 'Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man,' sold 950,000 copies, including presales on its first day, which was a first-day record for its publisher, Simon & Schuster. When she was asked during the interview if the president was known among family members as someone who frequently lied, she said, he "does on some levels know what he's doing."
Pointing to Trump's famous reluctance to wearing face masks amid the coronavirus pandemic, she said that the POTUS was not against science but could not help but ignore facts in order to spin the narrative in his favor. "I think one of the reasons he's sort of unraveling a bit now is because what he's always done in the past, that used to work, isn't really working as effectively anymore, so it has him scrambling a bit," she said.
She added: "Knowing, not knowing; educated, not educated as you say -- ultimately it is irrelevant. Just as in the grand schemes of things -- although I think it's extremely useful in some ways to understand his psychology -- it's irrelevant compared to what he's doing, that's what we need to focus on."
After saying in an Axios interview that his niece had signed an NDA and was not allowed to write a book, Trump tweeted criticizing Mary for the first time on Friday since the release of the book on July 14. He called her "a mess" and alleged that she wrote "untruthful things." He also accused her of breaking some unmentioned law by criticizing his parents who, he added, "couldn't stand her!"
Mary is the daughter of Fred Trump Jr and the eldest grandchild of Fred Trump Sr. She, incidentally, was the primary source behind the New York Times' explosive piece on Trump's taxes, including how he inherited more than $400 million in today's dollars from his father's real estate empire and was involved in “fraudulent” tax schemes. During the interview she said that she was legally in her right to take action. "I never had Donald's tax returns in my possession, so I could not have revealed them to anybody," she told Cuomo. It was unclear where she obtained the tax returns from to hand them over to NYT.
She also added that Trump's claim about her not being close to her family was wrong. "I really loved (my grandmother) and believe that she loved me. My grandfather, I don't think was really, had real positive feelings towards anybody except perhaps Donald," she said. Also, she added that she was not bothered by her uncle's remark about her. She said that being a mess was "an attack he hurls, predominantly, I think, about women."
"Honestly, I'm in very good company," she added. "I believe he's said the same thing about Nancy Pelosi, and I'm fine with that."