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Dr Mary Lea Trump is an American psychologist, author of three books about her relationship to members of the now-infamous Trump family. This is the third after Too Much and Never Enough and The Reckoning.
Who Could Ever Love You is Mary’s third book. An intensely personal memoir, she describes the various traumas of growing up in a dysfunctional family, where the callous disregard spread through the family tree, rooted in the patriarch, Fred Trump.
Everyone was affected, most notably Mary’s parents. Fred Jr, unable to escape the casual torturing of his father, was denied his heart’s desire, turned to drink, and died young. Her mother, Linda, exhibiting a shocking disregard for her daughter’s health, inflicted immense pain, both physical and mental, in Mary’s childhood years.
On the surface, one can view Mary’s growing up as one of privilege and comfort. She always seemed to have plenty of money and toys, attended private schools, and had excursions and holidays in private planes and sports boats.
Her friends were likewise privileged. It must have been a childhood that many of her American contemporaries could only dream about. The children of the Black families that lived on “the wrong side of the tracks”, hinted at in the first pages of her memory book and later noted as those who were deliberately excluded from her grandfather’s vast and growing apartment block empire in New York.
Fred Trump, Uncaring, Unsmiling, Arsehole
The root cause of all of her problems was Fred Trump, son of a German draft-dodger. Fred doesn’t seem to have cared for anyone much. People were just stepping stones to incredible wealth for this guy.
He destroyed his first-born son - Mary’s father Freddie - for the sin of not wanting to be part of the family business, instead going off to fly jet airliners as the age of jet transport dawned.
Left to his own devices, Mary’s father would have been happy, prosperous, secure. Mary’s ex-airline stewardess mother Linda would then - doubtlessly - have been a cheerful and capable parent to Mary and her elder brother Fred Trump III.
Instead, Freddie eased his unhappiness with alcohol, leading to conflict, separation, and divorce. Linda Trump, never fully accepted by her in-laws, had unhappiness thrust at her. Mary, a child of intelligence and a vivid imagination, was forced to deal with problems of health and relationships that were almost insurmountable.
Donald Trump, Uncaring, Smiling, Arsehole
Her uncle Donald turned out to be the one chosen to inherit and run the family empire. He also inherited his father’s racism and vicious bullying, but not his intelligence. Far easier for Donald Trump on the way up to cheat and exploit others. At least his father had diligently built a bricks and mortar kingdom.
Donald, on the other hand, found bankruptcy an easier path to wealth as a way to run up huge debts and then evade them. After Freddie’s death, he was one of the trustees for Mary and her brother, supervising a scheme to effectively cut them out of Fred Trump’s will and redistribute those millions to ease his own financial problems.
He doesn’t seem to have improved with age. If anything, he’s become more cynical and vicious.
Right now, he’s suing Mary for a hundred million dollars because she had the gall to expose some of his shonky business practices.
Mary became a doctor in clinical psychology, the perfect informed insider to warn the world of the danger posed by her psychopathic uncle. This book is the third to pursue the same theme and amazingly as I write, just weeks out from the 2024 election, Donald Trump has a solid chance of regaining the presidency and implementing a project to eliminate all opposition.
Trump Reich, here we come.
Read it and weep
It is impossible not to feel sorry for Mary Trump, knocked about throughout her life by forces beyond her control, most of them coming from inside her family, the very people who one would expect to be the most caring and comforting.
She has found her own way, no thanks to her rich relatives, and writes with clarity and candour. Not so that we readers should feel sorry for her but that we should recognise the misery that lies ahead if the scales tilt in Donald Trump’s direction, as they do with unjust frequency.
The man is unqualified to run a hamburger stand, let alone a nuclear superpower. and yet …
Five stars from me
As a memoir, this is so very far from the usual run of self-serving stories served up for entertainment, Mary exposes her miseries, points the finger squarely at those responsible, and warns us we’re next.
She does so with poignant intimacy, a straightforward writing style, and a clinical appreciation of the problem. Donald Trump is incapable of change and a second grasp on power would be used for revenge on all the slights and insults he’s accumulated in the four years since he tried to overthrow the US government.
An act of courage and patriotism, Mary Trump’s book stands head and shoulders above the usual ghost-written waffle of sports stars and politicians.
I’m not an American and I have no vote in November. I urge all those who do to read this book for an inside view of the danger in making Donald Trump a dictator.
Trump seems to have state legislatures and a stacked bench of judges at all levels behind any nasty tricks he might pull in counting and certifying the vote. The only way to defeat him is to make every effort to vote and make the defeat so overwhelming that no shenanigans in back rooms or stacked Supreme Courts can hope to succeed.
Plus the fact that it would be so satisfying to see this sexist, racist thug destroyed by a Black woman.
Britni