Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

by Mary L. Trump

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, re...

Since Mary was emotionally and physically absent due to her injuries, Fred became, by default, the only available parent, but it would be a mistake to refer to him as a caregiver. He firmly believed that dealing with young children was not his job and kept to his twelve-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week job at Trump Management, as if his children could look after themselves. He focused on what was important to him: his

Again, Donald and Robert in particular would have been in the most precarious position vis-à-vis Fred’s lack of interest. All behavior exhibited by infants and toddlers is a form of attachment behavior, which seeks a positive, comforting response from the caregiver—a smile to elicit a smile, tears to prompt a hug. Even under normal circumstances, Fred would have considered any expressions of that kind an annoyance, but Donald and Robert were likely even needier because they missed their mother and were actively distressed by her absence. The greater their distress, however, the more Fred rebuffed them. He did not like to have demands made of him, and the annoyance provoked by his children’s neediness set up a dangerous tension in the Trump household: by engaging in behaviors that were biologically designed to trigger soothing, comforting responses from their parents, the little boys instead provoked their father’s anger or indifference when they were most vulnerable. For Donald and Robert, “needing” became equated with humiliation, despair, and hopelessness. Because Fred didn’t want to be disturbed when he was home, it worked in his favor if his children learned one way or another not to need anything.

Fred’s parenting style actually exacerbated the negative effects of Mary’s absence. As a result of it, his children were isolated not just from the rest of the world but from one another. From then on it would become increasingly difficult for the siblings to find solidarity with other human beings, which is one of the reasons Freddy’s brothers and sisters ultimately failed him; standing up for him, even helping him, would have risked their father’s wrath.

Child abuse is, in some sense, the experience of “too much” or “not enough.” Donald directly experienced the “not enough” in the loss of connection to his mother at a crucial developmental stage, which was deeply traumatic. Without warning, his needs weren’t being met, and his fears and longings went unsoothed. Having been abandoned by his mother for at least a year, and having his father fail not only to meet his needs but to make him feel safe or loved, valued or mirrored, Donald suffered deprivations that would scar him for life. The personality traits that resulted—displays of narcissism, bullying, grandiosity—finally made my grandfather take notice but not in a way that ameliorated any of the horror that had come before.

As he grew older, Donald was subjected to my grandfather’s “too-muchness” at second hand—witnessing what happened to Freddy when he was on the receiving end of too much attention, too much expectation, and, most saliently, too much humiliation.

In order to cope, Donald began to develop powerful but primitive defenses, marked by an increasing hostility to others and a seeming indifference to his mother’s absence and father’s neglect. The latter became a kind of learned helplessness over time because although it insulated him from the worst effects of his pain, it also made it extremely difficult (and in the long run I would argue impossible) for him to have any of his emotional needs met at all because he became too adept at acting as though he didn’t have any. In place of those needs grew a kind of grievance and behaviors—including bullying, disrespect, and aggressiveness—that served their purpose in the moment but became more problematic over time.

With appropriate care and attention, they might have been overcome.

Unfortunately for Donald and everybody else on this planet, those behaviors became hardened into personality traits because once Fred started paying attention to his loud and difficult second son, he came to value them. Put another way, Fred Trump came to validate, encourage, and champion the things about Donald...

Fred’s ...

Mary got help for the physical injuries she sustained but none for whatever underlying psychological problems made her put herself into high-risk situations.

Friedrich, born in Kallstadt, a small village in western Germany, left for the United States when he turned eighteen in 1885 in order to avoid mandatory military service. He eventually made the bulk of his money through ownership of restaurants and brothels in British Columbia. He lit out for the Yukon territories in time for the Gold Rush, cashing out just before the boom collapsed near the turn of the century.

Fred and Mary were married on a Saturday in January 1936. After a reception at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, they honeymooned in Atlantic City for one night. On Monday morning, Fred was back at his Brooklyn office.

A housing shortage, the result of service members’ returning from World War II, created an opportunity for him to build apartments for navy personnel and their families. Fred had had time to sharpen his skills and gain the reputation that got him the work because while other eligible men had enlisted, he had chosen not to serve, following in his father’s footsteps.

Through his growing experience with building many houses simultaneously and his inherent skill at using local media to his own ends, Fred was introduced to well-connected politicians and learned through them how to call in favors at the right time, and, most important, chase government money.

The lure in Virginia Beach, where Fred learned the advantage of building his real estate empire with government handouts, was the generous funding made available by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Founded in 1934 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the FHA seems to have strayed far from its original mandate by the time Fred began taking advantage of its largesse. Its chief purpose had been to ensure that enough affordable housing was being built for the country’s cons...

When the first Italian American family moved to the neighborhood in the 1950s, Fred was scandalized.

The draw this time was the $9 million in FHA funds that would be paid to Fred directly, just as Donald would later capitalize on tax breaks lavished on him by both the city and the state. Fred had previously described the type of people renting the 2,201 apartments as “unwholesome,” the implication being that upstanding people lived only in the single-family dwellings that had been his early specialty. But $9 million can be very persuasive.

Around that time, when it became clear that Fred’s fortune would only continue to grow, he and his mother set up trust funds for his children that would shield the money from taxation.

Fred had become expert at gaining access to and kowtowing to more powerful and better-connected men. I don’t know how he acquired the skill, but he would later pass it on to Donald. Over time, he developed ties to leaders of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, the New York State political machine, and the federal government, many of whom were major players in the real estate industry. ...

he considered excellent places to entertain, impress, and rub elbows with the men best positioned to funnel government funds his way, much as Donald would do at Le Club in New York in the 1970s and at golf clubs everywhere.

Though Fred’s business was built on the back of government financing, he loathed paying taxes and would do anything to avoid doing so.

he never spent a dime he didn’t have to, and he never acquired debt, an imperative that did not extend to his sons. Bound by the scarcity mentality that had been shaped by World War I and the Depression, Fred owned his properties free and clear. The profits his company generated from rents were enormous. In relation to his net worth, Fred, whose children said he was “tighter than a duck’s ass,” lived a relatively modest life. Despite the piano lessons and private summer camps—of a piece with his notion of what was expected for a man of his station in life—his two oldest children grew up feeling “white poor.” Maryanne and Freddy walked the fifteen minutes to Public School 131, and when they wanted to go into the city, as everyone in the outer boroughs of New York refers to Manhattan, they took the subway

No matter how great the couple’s success, there remained for both Fred and Mary a tension between their aspirations and their instincts. In Mary’s case it was likely the result of a childhood marked by scarcity if not outright deprivation and in Fred’s a caution deriving from the massive loss of life, including his father’s, during the Spanish flu and World War I, as well as the economic uncertainty his family had experienced after his father’s death. Despite the millions of dollars pouring in from Trump Management every year, Fred still couldn’t resist picking up unused nails or reverse engineering a cheaper pesticide. Despite the ease with which Mary took to her new status and the perks that went along with it, including a live-in housekeeper, she spent most of her time in the House, sewing, cooking, and doing laundry. It was as if neither of them could quite figure out how to reconcile what they could possibly have and what they would actually allow themselves. Although frugal, Fred was neither modest nor humble. Early in his career, he had lied about his age in order to appear more precocious. He had had a propensity for showmanship, and he often trafficked in hyperbole—everything was “great,” “fantastic,” and “perfect.” He inundated local newspapers with press releases about his newly completed homes and gave numerous interviews extolling the virtues of his properties. He plastered south Brooklyn with ads and hired a barge covered with ads to float just off the shorel...

Peale’s shallow message of self-sufficiency appealed to him enormously. The pastor of Marble Collegiate Church in midtown Manhattan, Peale was very fond of successful businessmen. “Being a merchant isn’t getting money,” he wrote. “Being a merchant is serving the people.” Peale was a charlatan, but he was a charlatan who headed up a rich and powerful church, and he had a message to sell. Fred wasn’t a reader, but it was impossible not to know about Peale’s wildly popular bestseller, The Power of Positive Thinking. The title alone was enough for Fred, and he decided to join Marble Collegiate although he and his family rarely attended.

Fred already had a positive attitude and unbounded faith in himself. Although he could be serious and formal, or dismissive to people such as his children’s friends, who were of no interest to him, he smiled easily, even when he was telling ...

With the exception of his father’s death, the course of his life had been fairly smooth and full of supportive family and colleagues. Since his early days building garages, his success had been on an almost constantly upward trajectory. He worked hard, but unlike most people who work hard, he was rewarded with government grants, the almost limitless help of highly connected cronies, and immensely good fortune. Fred didn’t need to read The Power of Positive Thinking in order to co-opt, for his own purposes, the most superficial and self-serving aspects of Peale’s message. Anticipating the prosperity gospel, Peale’s doctrine proclaimed that you need only self-confidence in order to prosper in the way God wants you to. “[O]bstacles are simply not permitted to destroy your happiness and well-being. You need be defeated only if you are willing to be,” Peale wrote. That view neatly confirmed what Fred already thought: he was rich because he deserved to be. “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities!… A sense of inferiority and inadequacy interferes with the attainment of your hopes, but self-confidence leads to self-realization and suc...

Peale’s proto–prosperity gospel actually complemented the scarcity mentality Fred continued to cling to. For him, it was not “the more you have, the more you can give.” ...

Financial worth was the same as self-worth, monetary value was human value. The more Fred Trump had, the better he was. If he gave something to someone else, that person would be worth more and he less. He would pass that attitude on to Donald in spades.

Money is power and self worth dont Give to others or they will be worth more and you worth less

If the boys were tossing a ball around in the basement, the sound of the garage door opening was enough to cause Freddy to freeze. “Stop! My dad’s home.” When Fred came into the room, the boys had the impulse to stand and salute him. “So what’s this?” he’d ask as he shook each boy’s hand. “Nothing, Dad,” Freddy would say. “Everybody’s getting ready to leave soon.” Freddy remained quiet and on high alert as long as the Old Man was home.

Fred, for instance, wasn’t going to find out that Freddy and his buddy Homer from St. Paul’s School had stolen a hearse for a joyride. Before returning the vehicle to the funeral home, Freddy pulled into a gas station to fill up the tank. As he got out of the car and walked toward the pump, Homer, who was lying down in the back to see what it was like, sat up. A man at the pump across from them, thinking he’d just seen a corpse rising from the dead, screamed, and Freddy and Homer laughed until they cried. Freddy lived for that kind of prank, but he regaled his brothers and sisters with his exploits only if their father wasn’t home. For some of the Trump kids, lying was a way of life, and for Fred’s oldest son, lying was defensive—not simply a way to circumvent his father’s disapproval or to avoid punishment, as it was for the others, but a way to survive. Maryanne, for instance, never went against her father, perhaps out of fear of an ordinary punishment such as being grounded or sent to her room. For Donald, lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was. For Freddy, the consequences of going against his father were different not only in degree but in kind, so lying became his only defense against his father’s attempts to suppress his natural sense of humor, sense of adventure, and sensitivity.

The art of lying

The only reason Donald escaped the same fate is that his personality served his father’s purpose. That’s what sociopaths do: they co-opt others and use them toward their own ends—ruthlessly and efficiently, with no tolerance for dissent or resistance. Fred destroyed Donald, too, but not by snuffing him out as he did Freddy; instead, he short-circuited Donald’s ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotion. By limiting Donald’s access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son’s perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it. His capacity to be his own person, rather than an extension of his father’s ambitions, became severely limited. The implications of that limitation became clearer when Donald entered school. Neither of his parents had interacted with him in a way that helped him make sense of his world, which contributed to his inability to get along with other people and remained a constant buffer between him and his siblings. It also made reading social cues extremely difficult, if not impossible, for him—a problem he has to this day.

Donald didn’t understand any of that because the rules in the House, at least as they applied to the boys—be tough at all costs, lying is okay, admitting you’re wrong or apologizing is weakness—clashed with the rules he encountered at school. Fred’s fundamental beliefs about how the world worked—in life, there can be only one winner and everybody else is a loser (an idea that essentially precluded the ability to share) and kindness is weakness—were clear. Donald knew, because he had seen it with Freddy, that failure to comply with his father’s rules was punished by severe and often public humiliation, so he continued to adhere to them even outside his father’s purview. Not surprisingly, his understanding of “right” and “wrong” would clash with the lessons taught in most elementary schools. Donald’s growing arrogance, in part a defense against his feelings of abandonment and an antidote to his lack of self-esteem, served as a protective cover for his deepening insecurities. As a result, he was able to keep most people at arm’s length. It was easier for him that way. Life in the House made all the children in one way or another uncomfortable with emotions—either expressing them or being confronted with them. It was probably worse for the boys, for whom the acceptable range of human feeling was extremely narrow. (I never saw any man in my family cry or express affection for one another in any way other than the handshake that opened and closed any encounter.) Getting close to...

When Freddy, at fourteen, dumped a bowl of mashed potatoes on his then-seven-year-old brother’s head, it wounded Donald’s pride so deeply that he’d still be bothered by it when Maryanne brought it up in her toast at the White House birthday dinner in 2017.

The incident wasn’t a big deal—or it shouldn’t have been. Donald had been tormenting Robert, again, and nobody could get him to stop. Even at seven, he felt no need to listen to his mother, who, having failed to heal the rift between them after her illness, he treated with contempt. Finally, Robert’s crying and Donald’s needling became too much, and in a moment of improvised expedience that would become family legend, Freddy picked up the first thing at hand that wouldn’t cause any real damage: the bowl of mashed potatoes.

Why the mshed potatoes were a big deal

Everybody laughed, and they couldn’t stop laughing. And they were laughing at Donald. It was the first time Donald had been humiliated by someone he even then believed to be beneath him. He hadn’t understood that humiliation was a weapon that could be wielded by only one person in a fight. That Freddy, of all people, could drag him into a world where humiliation could happen to him made it so much worse. From then on, he would never allow himself to feel that feeling again. From then on, he would wield the weapon, never be at the sharp end of it.

Mashed potatoes

Encouraged by his father, Donald eventually started to believe his own hype. By the time he was twelve, the right side of his mouth was curled up in an almost perpetual sneer of self-conscious superiority, and Freddy had dubbed him “the Great I-Am,” echoing a passage from Exodus he’d learned in Sunday school in which God first reveals himself to Moses.

His first god complex

Because of the disastrous circumstances in which he was raised, Donald knew intuitively, based on plenty of experience, that he would never be comforted or soothed, especially when he most needed to be. There was no point, then, in acting needy. And whether he knew it on any level or not, neither of his parents was ever going to see him for who he truly was or might have been—Mary was too depleted and Fred was interested only in whichever of his sons could be of most use—so he became whatever was most expedient. The rigid personality he developed as a result was a suit of armor that often protected him against pain and loss. But it also kept him from figuring out how to trust people enough to get close to them. Freddy was terrified to ask Fred for anything. Donald had seen the results of that reticence. Whenever Freddy deviated even slightly from Fred’s often unspoken expectations, he ended up humiliated or shamed. Donald would try something different: he chose instead to ingratiate himself with their father by smashing through every barrier his older brother never dared test. He knew exactly how to play it: when Freddy flinched, Donald shrugged. He took what he wanted without asking for permission not because he was brave but because he was afraid not to. Whether Donald understood the underlying message or not, Fred did: in family, as in life, there could be only one winner; everybody else had to lose. Freddy kept trying and failing to do the right thing; Donald began to ...

Donald s challenge becikng the anti-freddy

Though Donald’s behavior didn’t bother Fred—given his long hours at the office, he wasn’t often around to witness much of what happened at home—it drove his mother to distraction. Mary couldn’t control him at all, and Donald disobeyed her at every turn. Any attempt at discipline by her was rebuffed. He talked back. He couldn’t ever admit he was wrong; he contradicted her even when she was right; and he refused to back down. He tormented his little brother and stole his toys. He refused to do his chores or anything else he was told to do. Perhaps worst of all to a fastidious woman like her, he was a slob who refused to pick up after himself no matter how much she threatened him. “Wait until your father comes home” had been an effective threat with Freddy, but to Donald it was a joke that his father seemed to be in on. Finally, by 1959, Donald’s misbehavior—fighting, bullying, arguing with teachers—had gone too far. Kew-Forest had reached its limits. Fred’s being on the school’s board of trustees cut two ways: on the one hand, Donald’s behavior had been overlooked longer than it otherwise might have; on the other, it caused Fred some inconvenience. Name-calling and teasing kids too young to fight back had escalated into physical altercations. Fred didn’t mind Donald’s acting out, but it had become intrusive and time consuming for him. When one of his fellow board members at Kew-Forest recommended sending Donald to New York Military Academy as a way to rein him in, Fred went ...

Non relationship with his mokm Mary

Over Donald’s objections, he was enrolled at NYMA, a private boys’ boarding school sixty miles north of New York City. The other kids in the family referred to NYMA as a “reform school”—it wasn’t prestigious like St. Paul’s, which Freddy had attended. Nobody sent their sons to NYMA for a better education, and Donald understood it rightly as a punishment.

Punishment at military boarding school

Freddy’s plans for the future still entailed becoming his father’s right-hand man at Trump Management, but the first time Freddy took off from the airstrip of the Slatington Flying Club behind the controls of a Cessna 170 in 1961, his perspective shifted. As long as he fulfilled the requirements of his business major and kept his grades up, he could fly, pledge a fraternity, and join the US Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). On a lark, Freddy chose Sigma Alpha Mu, a historically Jewish fraternity. Whether it was a conscious rebuke of his father, who frequently used phrases such as “Jew me down,” Freddy’s fraternity brothers eventually became some of his best friends. Joining ROTC served another purpose entirely. Freddy craved discipline that made sense. He thrived in ROTC’s transparent system of achievement and reward. If you did what you were told, your obedience was recognized. If you met or exceeded expectations, you were rewarded. If you made a mistake or failed to follow an order, you received discipline that was commensurate with the infraction. He loved the hierarchy; he loved the uniforms; he loved the medals that were clear symbols of accomplishment. When you are wearing a uniform, other people can easily identify who you are and what you’ve accomplished, and you are acknowledged accordingly. It was the opposite of life with Fred Trump, by whom good work was expected but never acknowledged; only mistakes were called out and punished. Getting his pilo...

Freddy chooses his own life- and a glimpse at freds opinion of jews...

Though he hadn’t wanted to attend NYMA, certain things made sense for Donald there, just as ROTC had for Freddy. There was structure, and there were consequences to his actions. There was a logical system of punishment and reward. At the same time, though, life at NYMA reinforced one of Fred’s lessons: the person with the power (no matter how arbitrarily that power was conferred or attained) got to decide what was right and wrong. Anything that helped you maintain power was by definition right, even if it wasn’t always fair. NYMA also reinforced Donald’s aversion to vulnerability, which is essential for tapping into love and creativity because it can also expose us to shame, something he could not tolerate. By necessity he had to improve his impulse control, not only to avoid punishment but to help him get away with transgressions that required a little more finesse.

Donalds lessons at military school

Donald was enabled from the beginning, every one of his projects funded and supported by Fred and then by myriad other enablers right up to the present. Other than a brief stint at a New York securities firm after graduating from college, Robert worked for Donald and then his father. Even Fred was not entirely self-made,

Freddy had put himself through flight school in college, defied his father (which he would spend the rest of his life paying for), and had no support from, as well as the active contempt of, his family. Obstacles aside, he had been determined to apply to TWA as many times as necessary. He made it on the first try.

Linda didn’t know about the constant barrage of abuse Freddy was receiving from his father in New York through letters and phone calls. But his friends knew. Freddy told them, with a note of disbelief in his voice, that the old man was embarrassed to have a “bus driver in the sky” for a son. It didn’t take much for his father to convince him that choosing to leave Trump Management meant choosing failure. The most crucial thing that Linda didn’t fully grasp—and to be fair, Freddy probably didn’t grasp it, either—was how much Fred Trump’s opinion mattered to his son.

From Fred’s perspective, Freddy’s leaving Trump Management must have felt like an act of blatant disrespect. Ironically, it was the kind of boldness Fred had wanted to instill in his son, but it had been squandered on the wrong ambition. Instead, Fred felt that Freddy’s unprecedented move undermined his authority and diminished Fred’s sense that he was in control of everything, including the course of his son’s life.

Since September 1964, Donald had been living at the House and commuting thirty minutes to Fordham University in the Bronx, his attendance at which he’d avoid mentioning in the years to come. Going from the regimented life at New York Military Academy to the relatively relaxed structure of college was a tough transition for Donald, who often found himself at loose ends and spent time strutting around the neighborhood looking for girls to flirt with. One afternoon he came across Annamaria, Billy Drake’s girlfriend, standing in the driveway watching her father wash the family car. Donald knew who she was, but they’d never spoken before. Annamaria knew all about Donald from Freddy. As the two of them were chatting, she mentioned that she had gone to a boarding school near New York Military Academy. “Which one?” he asked. When she told him, he looked at her for a second and then said, “I’m so disappointed that you went to that school.” Annamaria, who was three years older than Donald, said, “Who are you to be disappointed in me?” That ended the conversation. His idea of flirting was to insult her and act superior. It struck her as juvenile, as if he were a second grader who expressed his affection for a girl by pulling her hair.

Donad college non regular attendance and "flirting" shot down

Donald set his sights on the University of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, even though Maryanne had been doing his homework for him, she couldn’t take his tests, and Donald worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of his class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted. To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him. That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records. Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well. Not leaving anything to chance, he also asked Freddy to speak with James Nolan, a friend from St. Paul’s, who happened to work in Penn’s admissions office.

Cheating in school....college, paid buddyb to take SATs while his sister did his homework...

In a last-ditch effort to circumvent a push by local residents to have Steeplechase declared a landmark, which would have halted the development and scuttled his plans, Fred decided to host an event at the Pavilion of Fun, built in 1907. The purpose was to celebrate the park’s demolition—in other words, he would destroy what the community was trying to save before landmark status could be secured. He had my father give a press conference in order to announce the plan, making him the face of the controversy. The extravaganza featured models in bathing suits. Guests were invited to throw bricks (available for purchase) through the iconic window featuring an enormous image of the park’s mascot, Tilly, and his wide, toothy smile. In a photograph my grandfather holds a sledgehammer while grinning at a bikini-clad woman. The entire spectacle was a disaster. Sentiment, nostalgia, and community were concepts my grandfather didn’t understand, but when those windows were broken, even he must have conceded to himself that he’d gone too far. Due to local rebellion against his project, he was unable to secure the zoning change he needed and was forced to back out of the Steeplechase development.

When they were younger, Donald had been both a bystander and collateral damage. Now that he was older, he felt increasingly confident that Freddy’s continuing loss of their father’s esteem would be to his benefit, so he often watched silently or joined in.