Melinda Crumblin

“Though Donald’s fundamental nature hasn’t changed, since his inauguration the amount of stress he’s under has changed dramatically. It’s not the stress of the job, because he isn’t doing the job—unless watching TV and tweeting insults count. It’s the effort to keep the rest of us distracted from the fact that he knows nothing—about politics, civics, or simple human decency—that requires an enormous amount of work. For decades, he has gotten publicity, good and bad, but he’s rarely been subjected to close scrutiny, and he’s never had to face significant opposition. His entire sense of himself and the world is being questioned.”
― Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

“The patriarchy puts women in a box. And then it puts men in their own box on top of that one. And on some level, men think that qualifies as a win. But at the end of the day, everyone’s still trapped in a box. We men are all trapped in there together. With our anger, our egos, and maybe a goose or two.”
― Kyle Prue, How to Piss Off Men: 106 Things to Say to Shatter the Male Ego

“Unlike my grandfather, Donald has always struggled for legitimacy—as an adequate replacement for Freddy, as a Manhattan real estate developer or casino tycoon, and now as the occupant of the Oval Office who can never escape the taint of being utterly without qualification or the sense that his “win” was illegitimate. Over Donald’s lifetime, as his failures mounted despite my grandfather’s repeated—and extravagant—interventions, his struggle for legitimacy, which could never be won, turned into a scheme to make sure nobody found out that he’s never been legitimate at all. This has never been more true than it is now, and it is exactly the conundrum our country finds itself in: the government as it is currently constituted, including the executive branch, half of Congress, and the majority of the Supreme Court, is entirely in the service of protecting Donald’s ego; that has become almost its entire purpose.”
― Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

“Donald’s monstrosity is the manifestation of the very weakness within him that he’s been running from his entire life. For him, there has never been any option but to be positive, to project strength, no matter how illusory, because doing anything else carries a death sentence; my father’s short life is evidence of that. The country is now suffering from the same toxic positivity that my grandfather deployed 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?”
― Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man