Like everyone else, the author did not take Donald seriously when he announced he was running for President on June 16, 2015. Who did? P. 8
Mary starts with a spooky visit to the Trump White House in April of 2017. Everything
As a teenager Mary Trump loved to play Monopoly, but says she always lost. You gotta love the humor of this.
"In order to give me a fighting chance. . . . I was allowed to borrow increasingly huge sums of money from the bank and eventually from my opponent. We kept a running total of my enormous debt by writing the sums I owed in long columns of numbers on the inside of the cover.
Despite my terminally poor performance, I never once changed my strategy; I bought every Atlantic City property I landed on and put houses and hotels on my properties even when I had no chance of recouping my investment. I doubled and tripled down no matter how badly I was losing. It was a great joke between me and my friends that I, the granddaughter and niece of real estate tycoons, was terrible at real estate. It turned out that Donald and I had something in common after all."
P. 112
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Mary Trump delivers a stinging and gallows humor rebuke to her grandfather, Fred Trump, the main villain in her story, even more villainous than Donald.
Near the end of his life as dementia settled in, she says about Grandfather Fred:
"His new nickname for me stuck, and he called me 'nice lady' until his final illness. He said it gently and with apparent kindness; he was very sweet to me after he had forgotten who I was." P. 153
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"From his childhood in the (Fred Trump's) House to his early forays into the New York real estate world and high society until today, Donald's aberrant behavior has been consistently normalized by others. When he hit the New York real estate scene, he was touted as a brash, self-made dealmaker. 'Brash' was applied to him as a compliment (used to imply self-assertiveness more than rudeness or arrogance), and he was neither self-made nor a good dealmaker (rose solely on his Daddy's money and connections). But that was how it started---with his misuse of language and the media's failure to ask pointed questions." P. 198
Freddy Trump needed his father's acceptance, but he never received it. P. 76
Donald is as narrow, provincial, and egotistical as his father. P. 84
Donald has always been his father's construct. P. 138
Fred Trump repudiated his first son Freddy. Shameful. P. 116
Nothing is ever fair to Donald. P. 140
"His real skills (self-aggrandizement, lying, and sleight of hand) were interpreted as strengths unique to his brand of success. By perpetuating his version of the story he wanted about his wealth and his subsequent 'successes,' our family and then many others started the process of normalizing Donald. His hiring (and treatment) of undocumented workers and his refusal to pay contractors for completed work were assumed to be the cost of doing business. Treating people with disrespect and nickel-and-diming them made him look tough. P. 198
He has always been able to get away with blanket statements. He knows more than everybody else about every subject. He has never made a mistake and nothing is ever his fault. P. 202
"At a very deep level, his bragging and false bravado are not directed at the audience in front of him but at his audience of one: his long-death father." P. 204
His bluster and shamelessness happened to resonate with certain segments of the population. P. 204
He fears appearing weak. P. 207
His failure to face COVID-19 is tragic and criminal. P. 208
Trump is ultimately defenseless against reality. P. 208
"He rants about the weakness of others even as he demonstrates his own. But he can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy." P. 210
"Donald's monstrosity is the manifestation of the very weakness within him that he been running from his entire life. For him, there has never been any option to project strength but to be positive, no matter how illusory, because doing anything else carries a death sentence; my father's short life is evidence of that. The country is never suffering from the same toxic positivity that my grandfather delayed specifically to drown out his ailing wife, torment his dying son, and damage past healing the psyche of his favorite child, Donald J. Trump."Everything's great. Right, Toots?" P. 211
Freddy Trump needed his father's acceptance, but he never received it. P. 76
Donald is as narrow, provincial, and egotistical as his father. P. 84
Donald has always been his father's construct. P. 138
Fred Trump repudiated his first son Freddy. Shameful. P. 116
Nothing is ever fair to Donald. P. 140
"His real skills (self-aggrandizement, lying, and sleight of hand) were interpreted as strengths unique to his brand of success. By perpetuating his version of the story he wanted about his wealth and his subsequent 'successes,' our family and then many others started the process of normalizing Donald. His hiring (and treatment) of undocumented workers and his refusal to pay contractors for completed work were assumed to be the cost of doing business. Treating people with disrespect and nickel-and-diming them made him look tough. P. 198
He has always been able to get away with blanket statements. He knows more than everybody else about every subject. He has never made a mistake and nothing is ever his fault. P. 202
"At a very deep level, his bragging and false bravado are not directed at the audience in front of him but at his audience of one: his long-death father." P. 204
His bluster and shamelessness happened to resonate with certain segments of the population. P. 204
He fears appearing weak. P. 207
His failure to face COVID-19 is tragic and criminal. P. 208
Trump is ultimately defenseless against reality. P. 208
"He rants about the weakness of others even as he demonstrates his own. But he can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy." P. 210
"Donald's monstrosity is the manifestation of the very weakness within him that he been running from his entire life. For him, there has never been any option to project strength but to be positive, no matter how illusory, because doing anything else carries a death sentence; my father's short life is evidence of that. The country is never suffering from the same toxic positivity that my grandfather delayed specifically to drown out his ailing wife, torment his dying son, and damage past healing the psyche of his favorite child, Donald J. Trump."Everything's great. Right, Toots?" P. 211
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