11 of the Craziest Moments From Mary Trump's New Book
After weeks of suspense, the highly-anticipated “tell-all” written by Donald Trump’s own niece, Mary Trump, is officially out.
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man—the first book of its kind written by a Trump family member—published on Tuesday, July 14, and, as The Daily Beast reports, it includes “harrowing and salacious” stories about the president.
Mary, 55, is a clinical psychologist and has been reported as being an “outcast” in her family. Throughout the book, she traces her family history to explain and understand how the president became the person he is today. (And just to clarify the family tree here: Mary is the daughter of President Trump’s deceased older brother, Fred Trump Jr.) According to the New York Times, Mary writes that her grandfather, the president’s father, was a “sociopath” who failed Fred Trump Jr. and whose actions led to the president’s bullying and aggressive behaviors, including “cheating as a way of life.” The Times describes the book as depicting “a multigenerational saga of greed, betrayal and internecine tension.”
The Trump family has tried to stop the book’s publication since late June, saying that Mary signed a confidentiality agreement two decades ago in relation to a dispute over her grandfather’s will. The president’s younger brother Robert Trump briefly won an injunction against Mary and Simon & Schuster, but an appellate court lifted the temporary restraining order against the publisher, according to CNN. Then the day before the book's release, a New York Supreme Court judge lifted the restraining order that kept Mary from publicizing her new work.
Prior to its release, a few publications obtained early copies of the book and reported on some of the most surprising bits; ELLE.com has also now received a copy. Here, a running list of the craziest revelations and moments from Too Much and Never Enough:
Donald Trump allegedly paid someone to take the SAT for him.
According to CNN, Mary claims in the book that Donald was "worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of his class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted" to the University of Pennsylvania, where he eventually went to school. She alleges he paid "a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker to take his SATs for him."
The Washington Post reports that Mary said Donald's sister had been doing his homework but couldn't take the standardized test for him, which is why he enlisted a kid named Joe Shapiro. The Post reports Donald was friends with a Joe Shapiro at the University of Pennsylvania, though it's unconfirmed if this is the same person. If it is, Shapiro's sister told the Post that the two didn't meet until college, and both Shapiro's sister and wife told the Post that they did not think he took the SAT for Donald.
Sarah Matthews, a White House spokeswoman, told the New York Times that the allegation was “completely false.”
Donald and Ivana Trump re-gifted Mary Trump a basket of food with the caviar missing.
On a lighter note, CNN reports that in the book, Mary recounts Christmas gifts she received from Donald and his ex-wife Ivana, including a three-pack of underwear from Bloomingdales and an "obviously" re-gifted basket filled with food. She describes the basket as having an imprint where a caviar tin used to be.
Donald's sister allegedly called him a "clown" with "no principles."
In a New York Times' recap of the book, the paper reports that Mary alleges Donald's sister Maryanne Trump Barry thought he was a "clown" with "no principles" and thought, in 2015, that he'd never win the presidency.
Donald allegedly helped Barry obtain a seat in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
CNN reports that Mary writes, "Donald thought it might be useful to have a close relative on the bench in a state in which he planned to do a lot of business." She says Donald went through his friend and lawyer Roy Cohn, who called the Attorney General; Mary writes Barry was nominated to the position in September and confirmed the next month. However, Mary notes that Barry insisted she earned the position on her own.
Mary says Donald meets the criteria for being a narcissist.
She writes in the book, according to the Times, that Donald has all nine clinical criteria for narcissism, but adds that the label is not enough: “The fact is Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neurophysical tests that he’ll never sit for.”
She continues later, writing, “Donald has been institutionalized for most of his adult life, so there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.”
Mary also writes that she considers Donald's father, Fred, to be a "high-functioning sociopath." She says: "Having a sociopath as a parent, especially if there is no one else around to mitigate the effects, all but guarantees severe disruption in how children understand themselves, regulate their emotions, and engage with the world."
Mary alleges that the Trump family abandoned her father when he needed medical help.
Mary's father died from a heart attack at the age of 42, and she writes that although the family had substantial ties to nearby hospitals, no one helped her father get medical help while he was sick for weeks in their family home, according to CNN. Mary's father suffered from alcoholism and also had a faulty heart valve. She writes, "A single phone call would have guaranteed the best treatment for their son at either facility. No call was made."
The New York Times reports that Mary writes her father's family sent him to the hospital alone on the night he died. She says Donald went to see a movie.
Mary allegedly assisted New York Times reporters in their investigation into the Trump family's financials.
As previously reported by The Daily Beast, Mary does write about being a "key source" in the Times' 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation, according to the Washington Post. She says the Times reporters gave her a disposable cellphone in order to communicate and that she shared 19 boxes of Trump family financial materials with the reporters. The Post reports that the Times did not respond to a request for comment about the story.
Mary alleges that the Trump siblings said they would bankrupt a company in order to get back at Mary and her brother.
The Times reports that, during a legal battle over her grandfather's will, Mary writes her uncle Robert told her and her brother that if they didn't settle, the family would bankrupt one of the companies that Mary and her brother inherited a stake in and leave them with the bill. Robert did not respond to the Times' request for comment.
Donald allegedly tried to swindle inheritance money away from his siblings.
Mary alleges that, at one point, Donald came up with "a plan to betray his father and steal vast sums of money from his siblings" by secretly getting a codicil drafted for his father's will, which would have put Donald in control of his father's estate after he died. However, his father refused to sign, and "it didn't take long for Donald's scheme to be uncovered." In the end, Donald's father will was rewritten and a new standard was put in place that stated whatever Donald received, an equal amount must be given to his three other children. According to Mary, Barry later said about the scheme: "We would have been penniless...We would have had to beg Donald if we wanted a cup of coffee."
Donald once publicly commented on Mary's body at Mar-a-Lago.
Mary writes about once taking a trip to Mar-a-Lago with Donald when she was working with him on his next book (she ultimately was fired from the job). She says one day she was meeting Donald and his now ex-wife Marla Maples for lunch and arrived wearing a bathing suit and a pair of shorts. Upon seeing her, she writes that Donald said, "Holy shit, Mary. You're stacked!" She was 29 years old at the time.
Mary also describes Donald once calling her to say he had some pages of book material he'd been working on that were "really good." The next day, Mary received the 10 pages. She writes, "It was an aggrieved compendium of women he had expected to date but who, having refused him, were suddenly the worst, ugliest, and fattest slobs he'd ever met. The biggest takeaways were that Madonna chewed gum in a way Donald found unattractive and that Katarina Witt, a German Olympic figure skater who had won two gold medals and four world championships, had big calves."
Donald Trump was sent to military school allegedly because he was bullying kids.
As Newsweek reports, Mary writes that Donald was sent to the New York Military Academy as a teenager because of his habit of “name-calling and teasing kids too young to fight back” and “fighting, bullying, arguing with teachers.”
This post will continue to be updated.
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