Sleep Number Advertiser (1:48)

What.

Mary Trump (1:49)

Worries me is that Donald is a nihilist. My grandfather actually believed in legacy. He wanted Donald Trump to preserve his legacy. Donald doesn't believe in that. He does not believe that anything. Whether he thinks he's going to be going down because of the Epstein issue or because if he starts to think that his health is failing, he will not go alone. He will take as many people down with him.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (2:16)

I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast you wrote and we listened and we have another person that you have been clamoring to hear from. Mary Trump. And how she describes her life as a member of the Trump family is really quite extraordinary. And how she talks about her grandfather and noticing his symptoms of Alzheimer's and then recognizing those very same symptoms in our president is really quite chilling. She now has her own media company, Mary Trump Media, where she has a podcast like we do on YouTube. But I found her an absolutely fascinating and very thoughtful interviewee as she is able to analyze, through her own training as a clinical psychologist, the dynamics of the family and what it's like growing up Trump. So let's get into it. Mary Trump is in the house. Mary Trump. It's been a very long week.

Mary Trump (3:23)

Well, it seems that they all are now.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (3:26)

What is it like to wake up in the morning and just see your uncle everywhere? Everywhere. A man that you've been in and out of endless lawsuits, as is the Trump way, apparently, yes. How. How do you. Well, you've set up your own media business to deal with it. But. But what's it like inside your head?

Mary Trump (3:49)

It's actually something I've gotten used to. Don't get me wrong. There's a level at which I still take it very personally. I know I should probably let that go, but it's hard because he is my uncle, after all, and I feel like my. Not. I feel like my family is doing untold damage to my country and the planet. So that is hard to take. But it doesn't have its teeth in me the way it used to. After the 2016 election, every time I heard his name and I can distinguish, I could tell when he was being referred to. Obviously, at least twice a day, I would have this feeling of horror wash over me that this horrible thing had happened. I don't get that anymore, because this is. This is our reality, and it has been for over a decade now. It is more a shift in focus for me to the people who keep enabling him. Those are the people we need to figure out and start dealing with.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (4:51)

So in your book, who could ever love a family memoir? You talk about your 16th birthday, and you have it at a ballroom at a Hyatt hotel. And your father has written a checkout to Donald Trump because it's his hotel, and he turns up at the party and he's parading around the party as if it's his party. And I wanted to know from your vantage point as a teenager, what he like as a man to be around and what you observed of him when he was with women.

Mary Trump (5:23)

Because you get used to people you grow up with, right? It's not as if I ever thought there was something weird about him. People have often asked me, oh, wow, what was it like growing up in this family? It's like it was normal. It was my. It was my normal. There was no other frame of reference. So I believed the myth that my grandfather started that Donald was successful. But I never bought into the idea that he was smart because he was so demonstrably not. And not that I experienced it this way that night, but certainly later and certainly in the context of the last 10 years and the way his base treats him and how thirsty he is about attention. That was the first inkling that as long as Donald has an audience that's giving him attention, he doesn't really care about who is in the audience, because what he was doing was trying going out of his way to impress a bunch of teenagers who couldn't have cared less about the fact that he was there.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (6:29)

This has been the week of the release of the Epstein emails and, you know, the endless, endless demand for the release of the Epstein files. Did you ever meet Jeffrey Epstein?

Mary Trump (6:44)

I never met him, thankfully, but I found out recently that he was at Donald's second wedding, his wedding to Marla Maples, and I was there, too. So I have had the great misfortune of being in the same room with Jeffrey Epstein, which is alarming enough, but thankfully now I never. I never met him. I wouldn't have been considered worthy of meeting him.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (7:04)

Meaning what?

Mary Trump (7:05)

Weird way of putting it.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (7:06)

Meaning you're too old or.

Mary Trump (7:07)

No, Jeez, No. Although that's a horrifying thought. I probably would have been at that point, know that I wasn't somebody that Donald ever would have gone out of his way to introduce to his close friends and inner circle.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (7:21)

Okay, so what was your impression ofi mean, was he attractive to women? Did women cleave to him? Did he. Did he behave inappropriately at all with women?

Mary Trump (7:34)

Donald? Yeah, I never saw anything inappropriate. He was sexist, for sure. Like everybody in my family, including the women, were misogynists. He and my Uncle Robert treated my grandmother and in a very infantilizing, disrespectful way. And it was very obvious that they didn't respect women and didn't think women should have any power. And a common dinner table conversation would be talking about all of the ugly fat women or talking about the beautiful women and how they were classed by the men in my family. My dad wasn't like that at all. But also, he wasn't really included in a lot of the conversations.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (8:20)

And just to remind people, your father was Donald Trump's older brother and he died when he was 42. Causes related to alcoholism. And you were 16.

Mary Trump (8:29)

Yes. And, I mean, that was a very big complicating factor, certainly in my dad's life, but in mine as well. He was the oldest son in the Trump family. He was the namesake. He was Fred Jr. He was supposed to take over the empire from my grandfather, and obviously that didn't work out. So that set my dad's life on a pretty awful trajectory, especially after he started drinking and was never able to rehabilitate himself in his father's mind. And then simply by virtue of the fact that I was Freddie's daughter and a girl, nobody in the family had any interest in me or anything I wanted to do or had to say.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (9:14)

But you've now turned it into a career.

Mary Trump (9:17)

The irony, yeah, that is a sort of sobering way to look at it, but it also happens to be tr. What is unfortunate, though, is that Donald Trump is the most or arguably the most powerful person on the planet and has shown himself to be willing to be destructive and cruel as possible to get power and wealth for himself. So it would feel utterly irresponsible for me to step aside and say nothing. Watching all of this unfold and trying to play some small role has felt. Felt like a way to stay grounded in a fight that's much bigger than he is. Stepping away and washing my hands of it would. And for me, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (10:22)

In your first book that came out in 2020, you called him the most dangerous man in the world. It's very clear that people are scared of him. Do you recognize why people are scared of him? Were you scared of him when you were growing up? Were people around him in the family scared of him?

Mary Trump (10:44)

Honestly find it unfathomable that anybody would ever be scared of Donald. He's the weakest, most pathetic person I've ever known. And there is nothing about him that's threatening. So I think it's important to step back and put that designation in context. He was and remains the world's most dangerous man because of power that was given to him by other people. So Donald is the result of a myth my grandfather started a long time ago. My dad was not going to cut it as my grandfather's heir, so he turned to Donald and made use of him.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (11:31)

When did Donald become your grandfather's favorite son? And talk to us about how he sort of molded Donald or how the intensity of their relationship grew?

Mary Trump (11:45)

Yeah, I think it's more accurate to say he became useful. And it happened probably simultaneously to his discovering that my father was not the right person. My father, my grandfather, wanted a killer to be the one to take over, and my dad was, despite being very smart, you Cannot be a stupid person and put yourself through flight school and start flying 707s at the age of 25. He was sensitive, though. He was kind, he was generous. These are not qualities valued by the Trump family at all. At the same time as Donald is a teenager, my grandfather is seeing, he's belligerent, he's disrespectful, he's never wrong, he's the best. He's the this, the that, and that resonated with my grandfather. And then from there he realized that Donald had something my grandfather did not have in the way he needed to. He had media savvy, he had an ability to self promote that far exceeded my grandfather's. So that became very valuable because my grandfather, as successful as he was in Queens and Brooklyn, never was able to make the move into Manhattan. He needed somebody with Donald's personality and essentially lack of self awareness and willing to take credit for things that he didn't do, to put himself out there as shamelessly as Donald did.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (13:14)

And your father didn't cut it because he wanted to be a pilot. He didn't want to go into real estate.

Mary Trump (13:19)

Actually, my father had every intention of going into real estate. He worked for my grandfather every summer after he graduated from college. He was a business major. He went to work for my grandfather, assumed he was going to be my grandfather's right hand man. But for reasons that we don't fully know, my grandfather just didn't like my debt and was not willing to give him any power. He treated him poorly, he humiliated him in front of the other employees. And finally my dad just couldn't take it anymore. And that's when he decided, and this must have taken such enormous courage, it's hard for me to imagine that he was able to do it. He quit and then he applied for jobs at TWA. He got accepted into their class in 1964. But because of the pressure he was getting at home and because of the contempt my grandfather had for that kind of achievement, I mean, being a pilot for TWA at the dawn of the jet age was kind of a big deal. In 1964, that's when my dad started drinking. And his career as a pilot for TWA lasted eight months.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (14:26)

Because of his drinking.

Mary Trump (14:28)

Yes.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (14:29)

So let's just go back to Donald Trump again. And so he became the de facto older son. He inherited his father's business, the real estate business. One of the things I find just puzzling is why is everybody so scared of him?

Mary Trump (14:45)

Yeah, again, I think it depends on the context. Right. As I was saying earlier, Donald from the beginning has been of use to smarter, more powerful people, beginning with my grandfather. And for people not paying a lot of attention, that sort of created an aura. He, Donald, that is, acted as if my grandfather's wealth was actually his wealth, that he was a self made man and my grandfather actually helped him construct that story that was fabricated out of whole cloth and then the New York media ran with it and the banks threw money at him and then Mark Burnett rehabilitated him and then of course the Republican Party did. So he went from being somebody who was essentially a tool for other people, whether it was my grandfather to get the kind of recognition for his business and the kind of wealth he wanted, or New York media selling papers or NBC having a hit show, or the Republican Party having somebody with the kind of charisma that appealed to their base to becoming somebody who actually does have real power in the world and has shown himself perfectly willing to use it in ways both illegitimate and terrifying.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (16:11)

So he's sort of always been an example of fake it till you make it and then amazingly, he has made it. How is he planning to get through this next sort of period where everybody is screaming about Epstein right now?

Mary Trump (16:28)

Well, there have been so many opportunities over the last few years and this, this honestly has been one of the most demoralizing things to have witnessed where the Republican Party or the American people could have taken an off ramp away from Donald and for various reasons chose not to. This is another opportunity for that. Again though, the problem is that far too many people see Donald as the only viable way for the Republican Party to stay in power or as individuals to maintain their power. Republican politicians are afraid of getting primaried. Paramount, for example, is afraid of not having their merger go through. So we see all of these individuals and entities, many of whom do have legitimate power and wealth of their own, capitulating because they want more power and wealth. So I think in some ways just quickly getting back to the question of fear. For a lot of these people, it's not about fear as much as it's about their bottom line. Like I think we can make a very good argument that if all large media corporations had stuck together, if all Y2 law firms and universities had stuck together and refused to capitulate, we would be in a very different situation right now. Certainly that's the case with the Republican Party. So the question is, do rank and file Republicans have the power to force people who have proven themselves to be loyalists at whatever cost? Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche Kash Patel to do something that they must know on some level could be utterly destructive to the future of Donald Trump, the Trump regime, and so called Trumpism.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (18:18)

Okay, so let's talk about his health. I'm sure you're very cognizant of the health issues in your family. Your grandfather and your grandmother had dementia. When you look at Donald Trump as a trained psychologist, what do you see?

Mary Trump (18:38)

Just to be clear, I'm a clinical psychologist, not a neuropsychologist, but I know enough about how to assess certain kinds of neurological disorders. And of course, as you said, my grandfather had Alzheimer's for a very, very long time. So I'm more comfortable speaking about the untreated, long standing psychiatric disorders Donald's had. But there are times I look at him and I see my grandfather, I see that same look of confusion. I see that he does not always seem to be oriented to time and place. His short term memory seems to be deteriorating. And obviously this is somebody who has never had a great deal of impulse control, but that too is deteriorating as well. So there are many, many red flags and many questions that are not being answered by the administration.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (19:34)

So tell us a little bit about when you first noticed that your grandfather was beginning to slip and how that manifested itself.

Mary Trump (19:45)

It was. It took a very long time. And at the beginning, of course, the signs were not clear. You know, he could be a very petty person, so it wasn't clear if he was being petty or if there was something else going on. But I was in. This was in 1991, I think I was at Columbia getting a degree, a master's in English Lit.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (20:09)

How old would your grandfather be when you went to Columbia and you started noticing signs?

Mary Trump (20:15)

He was 86. And I knew that off the top of my head because he was born in 1905. And, you know, there had been signs before that, certainly, but he. I had to sign a check. And because this is the way my family worked at the time, my lawyer, who was my grandfather's lawyer, called me to tell me that my grandfather was very upset because my signature wasn't legible and that if I didn't change my signature, he was going to disown me. And that seemed excessive.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (20:52)

Right?

Mary Trump (20:52)

I mean, my grandfather didn't like me. He never did like me.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (20:55)

And he didn't like your mother. Right, because he blamed your mother for your father's dreams.

Mary Trump (20:59)

He did my mother, which is, first of all, alcoholism runs in my family. And secondly, my grandfather precipitated my father's alcoholism. But that's a separate issue.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (21:14)

He blamed your mom.

Mary Trump (21:15)

He blamed my mother for many things. He considered her a gold digger, which, if you ever saw where I grew up, you would realize is laughable.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (21:24)

Okay. But to come back to your grandfather's health. So he. Your. You get a call from your grandfather's lawyer, who's also your lawyer, saying that he's going to disown you because your signature on this check is a mess, basically.

Mary Trump (21:37)

Yeah. It's illegible.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (21:38)

It's illegible. And that does seem an overreaction. Is that the beginning of when you realize that he's starting to unravel?

Mary Trump (21:46)

Yeah. And it after that, because, again, it had been happening. My grandmother would mention something every once in a while in the previous five or ten years before that, but after that, things happen pretty quickly. And it was in the early 90s when he started forgetting who people were and when we were in larger settings that I would see that deer in a headlight look of where am I and why am I here? That I sometimes see in Donald's eyes. And finally, probably in 1993, 94, we used to spend Easter at Mar a Lago because it was harder for my grandfather to be out in public. So we used to go to their country club, and we couldn't really do that anymore, so we went down to Mar a Lago. And that's when my grandfather stopped knowing who I was. And I was standing with him, and he was very. Once he forgot who I was, he was very nice to me. It was sort of a relief, honestly. So he and my Aunt Mary Ann and I were outside, and he turns to her and he says. He points to me. He turns to her and says, isn't she such a nice lady? And meaning me and Marianne, you know, laughed or smiled or what have you. And then he turned to her and he said, and who are you? And her heart broke. It was the very first time he had known, and she was his oldest child. So that's when we knew that this was just going to Amy.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (23:29)

And how did your uncle Donald Trump deal with his own father being not all there, having Alzheimer's?

Mary Trump (23:38)

He was despicable. He treated my grandfather like he was an annoyance. He wanted nothing to do with him. My grandfather got quite childlike at one point and also very concerned about money. He was always worried that he was poor or somebody was stealing from him.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (24:00)

Which is an anxiety that comes with Alzheimer's, right?

Mary Trump (24:03)

Yes. Yeah. And my grandmother received the brunt of all of that because they never got him into a facility, and they could have gotten him into a very nice one. So my grandmother was left alone in the house with him most of the time, which put her under massive strain. But you know, when we were all together, my grandfather would gravitate to Robert, my Uncle Robert, and Donald. He never forgot Donald. And Donald would leave the room, he would ignore him. He had no use for him whatsoever. He had no patience with him. And at the time I thought that it was just hideous that he was so contemptuous. But then later it's like, not only is that how he's treating his father, that's how he is treating the man who made him, who treated him better than he treated everybody else in my family combined. So that said a lot to me about Donald that I would not have known before.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (25:08)

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Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (28:57)

And I'm back with Mary Trump talking about what it's like growing up. Trump so when you say you look at Donald Trump and you see your grandfather, can you just repeat some of the things that you see in him?

Mary Trump (29:09)

Sure. This increasing obsession with wealth, which has always been there, obviously, because the only currency in my family was money. There was no love, there was no affection, there was no respect. It was the family was a zero sum game. And your entire worth, literal and metaphorical, was calculated by how much money you had in the bank. So that's why the Trumps are very ungenerous people, because if you give somebody else something, they're worth more and you're worth less. But over time, it went from being something that was necessary to his worth to being something that became sort of a desperate need. That was my grandfather, like just the terrifying thought that he was poor and then what would he be? And of course there was no reason for for him to think that With Donald, we see Similar things like he why does he need to accumulate so much wealth? And I know he's not alone in this. This is a disease that is pretty common. But his grasping nature, his desperate need to surround himself with these excessively wealthy people and put them in a position where they feel like they just need to hand over millions, tens of millions of dollars to him. It's pathological. Not that it ever wasn't, but it's increasingly pathological. So that's one thing. Just this fear that it's never going to be enough, which is partially what my first book was about. And then, of course, there is the increasing awareness that he is not at all who he's been pretending to be his entire life. And I think it's important to remember that, especially since my grandfather decided that Donald was going to be the guy, he has spent the vast amount of his psychic energy pretending he's something he's not. And he is not conscious of this at all. But as he deteriorates psychologically, emotionally and cognitively, it's getting much, much harder for him to keep that reality from himself, from his conscious awareness. And it is terrifying.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (31:42)

And how does that play out? How do you observe that playing out in him?

Mary Trump (31:47)

I see it in his uncertainty. Like, he's always been quite good at blustering. Like he'll say something that's clearly wrong, and instead of doing what any normal person would do, making a joke and say, you know, I misspoke, or I meant this, he just plows through as if that's, of course, what he meant to say, and the rest of us are just living in his world. He seems deeply uncertain. He seems to be reckoning with the possibility that he may not be immortal after all. And that, to me, suggests that his defense mechanisms around preventing himself and everybody else from knowing the reality about him are weakening. And again, I see this look in his eyes sometimes like he can't believe he said this. He can't believe he admitted this thing. He doesn't know who he's talking to. He doesn't know where he is. And it's kind of all of a piece. So we're seeing all of this deterioration happening kind of at the same time.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (32:58)

He's talked recently about whether or not he'll get into heaven. So he's clearly got some sort of foreboding about death. Why wouldn't he have? He's 79. Was the family religious at all? What was Donald's reaction when his father died?

Mary Trump (33:22)

My family was not religious. I mean, they made the motions but not religious in any real sense. I mean, maybe my Aunt Marianne, she converted to Catholicism when she got married the first time around and considered herself a devout Catholic. But other than that, no, they were just knee jerk Protestants. Donald, interestingly, does not believe in a higher power. He is the higher power.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (33:48)

He is the higher power.

Mary Trump (33:49)

And his comments about is he going to get into heaven? Probably not. Those I have found the most diagnostic in a sense because it shows me that his defenses are weakening. He is becoming increasingly less able to protect himself from the fact that he may indeed be mortal. And what worries me is that Donald is a nihilist. My grandfather actually believed in legacy. He wanted Donald to preserve his legacy. Of course, as soon as he had a chance to, he destroyed it. Donald doesn't believe in that. He does not believe that anything or anybody could exist beyond him. Which is what makes me nervous. Because whether he thinks he's going to be going down because of the Epstein issue or because if he starts to think that his health is failing, he will not go alone. He will take as many people down with him. That was the case in 2020 and we've seen what happened since then. So that worries me. Nihilists are very dangerous people if they feel like they're losing control.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (35:00)

And as a father, he's a nihilist. He doesn't want his kids to take on his legacy.

Mary Trump (35:06)

He doesn't believe in such a thing and he certainly wouldn't believe they're capable of it because he's also a narcissist.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (35:13)

We can see physical signs of his deterioration. We've written a lot about his cankles. We've written about the bruising on his hands. Are those things you remember at all from your grandfather?

Mary Trump (35:24)

Yeah, cankles I don't remember because my grandfather I never saw until the very, very end, I never saw my grandfather in anything but a three piece suit. So it wasn't until he was in his late 80s and very seriously sick with Alzheimer's. Just he'd come home from work because he still went to work every day. He'd go upstairs and he'd come downstairs wearing his dress shirt, his tie, his boxers and his shoes and his socks. So I couldn't see any evidence of cankles, but.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (35:56)

Right.

Mary Trump (35:57)

But he, there definitely there was a lot of bruising on his hands and he had some other minor health issues. My grandpa was probably the healthiest person I've ever known until he was well into his late 70s. So Donald is not a healthy person and he never has Been. So it doesn't surprise me that he would have physical symptoms that my grandfather didn't have.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (36:22)

Right, but he. But your grandfather did have the bruising on the hands. But he wasn't. He was 86 before you noticed that he had symptoms of Alzheimer's.

Mary Trump (36:35)

He was younger than that. But that's when it first became unmistakable. Like, okay, we've noticed he's forgetting things. He's losing his temper. Because my grandfather was somebody who was in total control of his world, his world for his family and his business. Nobody thwarted him, nobody said no to him. There was no reason for him ever to be angry. And he would have these terrible bursts of temper. And I think my grandmother had the most exposure to this. So it was when he was 86 that I had my own experience of realizing, okay, this is not just he's getting old, he's getting older, but there's something. Something going on that suggests that there's a deeper problem than some short term.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (37:24)

Memory loss and some just general aging. Yeah. Yeah. And how did Donald Trump treat your grandmother?

Mary Trump (37:31)

He treated her consistently throughout his life, dismissively. And he had no respect for her, didn't listen to her, he didn't ask for her advice ever. And I think I used the word earlier, very infantilizing, as if she was somebody who needed to be taken care of. Not that he was wrong. I mean, she was very much a dependent person, but there was no love lost between them.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (38:05)

And what do you think he's like as a husband? I mean, you must have known Ivana.

Mary Trump (38:10)

Yeah, sadly.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (38:14)

Sadly. You knew her.

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Mary Trump (38:16)

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. She was not a. Not a pleasant person, but kind of a good partner for him, actually, in a way. I don't think Marla or Melania are.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (38:29)

But what do you mean?

Mary Trump (38:33)

Well, one, I think one, she was age appropriate, so there was that. And he was just at the beginning of things. And she was a very tough, strong person, her unpleasantness and cruelty aside, you know, I think she was somebody who at the beginning did. Was able to hang with him, at least for a while. So probably that might have been. In terms of his marriages. Like that might have been the most even match he had. But whether it's a romantic partner or. Or a business partner or a child or a constituent, whatever it is, every single relationship Donald has ever had is transactional. So his. He is the same way with his wives as he is with anybody else.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (39:24)

On. And Mary, we're just going to take some messages from our sponsors.

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Mary Trump (40:12)

F that's gotta be true again.

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Mary Trump (40:28)

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Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (42:02)

And we're back. I'm joined by Mary Trump talking about who else but her uncle Donald Trump. And what was your point of view on Marla Maples, his second wife, and then his third wife, our first lady, Melania.

Mary Trump (42:17)

Sorry, hearing that phrase, first lady in relation to her always pulls me up short. I really like Marla. We didn't spend tons of time together, but I saw her whenever we were down in Mar? A Lago, and she was very pleasant. And I felt very bad for her because my family treated her so contemptuously. It was inexcusable, the way they treated her. I think we were around the same age, so I was in my late 20s when they got married, maybe. So I never had a bad experience with her. I just felt that she was completely out of her depth and just married into a bad situation that she wasn't prepared to handle. I only met Melania once, and it was before they were married. And during the entire. Just. It was me, Donald, and Melania. I, unfortunately, had arrived to a Father's Day celebration at their apartment in Trump Tower too early. So it was just the three of us, and it was a little awkward. And during that entire time, couldn't have been more than 10 minutes. And Donald was just telling her a story about how he had hired me to write his second book and that I had been in a really bad place and he kind of rescued me. And she said nothing the whole time until he told her that things were so bad for me at the time that I was using drugs. And she said, really? And I said, no, I've never done. And it's true. I've never done drugs in my life, so. But he needed to make it seem that I was as bad off as I could be so that his offering to hire me to write a second book was a bigger deal. And the only word she said was, really, Because I think once I said, no, actually, I didn't do drugs. I think she lost interest again.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (44:10)

Interesting. And when you worked with him on that book, what was that experience like?

Mary Trump (44:18)

It was really frustrating. There were parts of it I enjoyed. I had a desperate desk in the back room at his office in Trump Tower. So I got to know a bunch of fun people, interesting people who were very helpful. And I got to travel a bit. I went out to Las Vegas with one of his vice presidents because he was working on a project out there, and went down to Mar? A Lago, spent some time in Atlantic City talking to the president of his casinos, but I don't remember how long I was there. It was a few months. He never, ever sat down and gave me a conversation. He never. He Wanted me to write this book without ever speaking to him about the book. So I check in with him every morning and he'd be sitting behind his very large desk going through newspaper clippings because there was a full time assistant whose job it was to cut out any article in any publication around the world that mentioned him or was about him. And that's how he started his day. And if he thought it was a particularly complimentary one or an insulting one, or not complimentary enough, he would write notes with his blue felt tip pen to the person who wrote the article and show it to me and ask me what I thought. Like that was really our only interaction. So it's very difficult to write somebody's autobiography.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (45:53)

Right.

Mary Trump (45:54)

If they don't talk to you about the book.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (45:57)

Did the book end up getting written?

Mary Trump (45:59)

Not by me.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (46:00)

Right, right. What was the book? What did the book turn out to be?

Mary Trump (46:04)

I think it was called the Surviving at the Top was the original name. And then because it came out right around the time he started declaring bankruptcy, they changed the name on the paperback to the Art of Survival.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (46:20)

The Art of Survival. So you started on it, but then you were. There just wasn't enough material.

Mary Trump (46:26)

And I think the publisher, he hired me, Donald hired me on a whim. And the publisher was not happy about it because I'd never written a book. But, you know, I consider myself a writer and I think it would have been fine, but they didn't. They wanted somebody else. So after a few months of his not speaking with me, the publisher decided to use that as an excuse. So instead of firing me himself, Donald had his publisher fire me, which is just like par for the course.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (46:56)

So all families have their ups and downs. I understand yours more extreme, and there's been endless lawsuits back and forth. Nevertheless, is the part of you that looks at him as he ferries back between Mar a Lago and the White House, that you think I could have been a part of that?

Mary Trump (47:17)

Oh, gosh, no. No, I see that. I think that the biggest difference between my family and most other families is there were no ups at all. Its only downside, there was no upside to being part of that family. These were cruel, selfish people who don't understand love, who don't have compassion or empathy. And I consider myself extremely lucky that I am not part of that family at all.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (47:51)

Wow, that's an extraordinary thing to say about your family. Are you still in touch with your brother at all?

Mary Trump (47:57)

No.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (48:00)

Right. So is there anyone you're in touch with from your. From your blood family?

Mary Trump (48:05)

No, and I prefer it that way. It's healthier, it's saner. And again, I look at people like Donald and others in my family, and it is amazing but true that as far as I can tell, and I've tried, they have no redeeming characteristics. And I think they. They have my grandfather or my grandmother to thank for that, but especially my grandfather.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (48:36)

Final question. So the Epstein files have been everywhere this week. More and more emails revealing all sorts of connections with Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein obviously was a famous pedophile. Do you think it's possible your uncle had sex with girls underage?

Mary Trump (48:56)

Obviously, I have no insider knowledge of any of that. What I will say is that we know many of the things Donald is capable of. We know many of the horrific things he's done as a human being and as President of the United States and of America. So what I say about him that we need to keep in mind there is no such thing as worst. He will always get worse.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (49:22)

Mary Trump, I mean, you paint an absolutely appalling portrait of your family, and you're not in touch with any of them now, and yet they are the most powerful family in the world. What a strange. What a strange experience for you.

Mary Trump (49:43)

It has been a wild ride, that's for sure. But again, I think staying in the fight and sharing what I know and understanding things from my particular perspective have helped me stay grounded, and that actually has been one of the things that's helped me survive the family, just staying grounded and always, whenever possible, keeping sight of what really matters in this life of ours. And it is not money, and it is not greed, and it is not cruelty. It is staying connected to people as an empathetic, compassionate human. I think in these very dark times, that's sort of the least we could do.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (50:28)

Sometimes families spawn political dynasties. We know that the health Secretary came from a famous Democratic family. He's now become a Republican. I'm obviously talking about RFK Jr. Is there any chance that you would run for politics?

Mary Trump (50:45)

Oh, no, no, no, no. And I actually, even if I were to, which I'm not going to, I don't know that we could say that that would be part of a dynasty, because I am. I have nothing to do with them. I don't even feel like I'm related to them anymore in a way, so. But don't worry, there's no danger of that ever happening. I always felt like I'm more useful fighting on the outside of this thing.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (51:08)

Well, you would have the name recognition, which is supposed to be half the.

Mary Trump (51:11)

Battle, so I hear. But I also don't think that that's going to stand me in good stead in the not too distant future.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (51:20)

Mary Shrump, thank you so much for joining us and I can highly recommend your book. This. It's you can see it's full of post. Its actually and this sweet picture of you. Who could ever love you but it's a fascinating family memoir.

Mary Trump (51:34)

Thank you.

Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (51:39)

It's so curious to have a guest that's had such proximity to the Trump family and to be so clear eyed about it and to have separated herself entirely from the family. And yet of course there is the irony that Donald Trump never stops talking and Mary Trump, a trained psychologist, is now making her living and her impact by talking about a man who can't stop talking. Anyway, if you have been thank you for joining us. Would love to get your comments because I know so many of you are fans of Mary, have loved her books. Leave us a comment. Join the DailyVees community. Please subscribe to the podcast and don't forget, despite what Mary says about Melania and her only ever saying one word to her as our first lady would have us be beast. And special thanks to our Beast tier of membership. Herbie Andrew Mellor Fulvia Orlando.

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Podcast Host (Joanna Coles) (54:34)

As Conde Sandra Clark, Bonzo, Val Love, Francisco Bocock D.C. not Bobcock D.C. karen White, Heidi Riley, Connie Rutherford, Sharon Shipley and Andrea Hodel. Special thanks to you bebeast and the thanks to our production team, Devon Rogerino, Anna Von Erson and our editor Jesse Millwood.

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Episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the Beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to thedailybeast.com membership podcast and sign up today.