Mary Trump

HEALING THE SCARS OF

the pandemic, political disruption, and the insurrection is going to take time, says Mary Trump. From the September 22, 2021, “Michelle Meow Show” program “Mary Trump: The Reckoning.” MARY L. TRUMP, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist; Author, The Reckoning: Our Nation’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal and Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man In Conversation with MOLLY JONGFAST, Editor at Large, The Daily Beast; Host, “The New Abnormal” Podcast; Twitter @MollyJongFast Introduction and Q&A by MICHELLE MEOW, Producer and Host, “The Michelle Meow Show” on KBCW/ KPIX TV and Podcast; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors

MARY MARY TRUMP: THE TRUMP: THE RECKONING RECKONING

Trump, a clinical psychologist, author and niece of the former president, discusses Americans dealing with trauma.

Editor’s note: Just hours before this program took place, news broke that former President Donald J. Trump had filed a lawsuit (seeking $100 million or more) against his niece, Mary Trump, and The New York Times over the release of his financial information. The release of the information had been mentioned in a Daily Beast interview Molly Jong-Fast had conducted with Mary Trump. Naturally, our speaker and moderator addressed the situation in our program.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: It’s very fun to get to interview you . . . after I got you sued. I’m sorry. MARY TRUMP: You know, I was actually telling somebody the other day that I really wish Donald would sue me, because it would help book sales. And turns out you’re the reason I got sued all along. So thank you. [Laughter.] JONG-FAST: My editor at The Daily Beast sent me a text that was like, “Yo, Molly.” And I wrote back, “What’s going on?” He was like, “You’re in this lawsuit.” And I was just delighted. But then my husband, who’s like an adult, was like, “Oh, my God, what is this?” He is having a heart attack.

I think the lawyer misspelled her own name at one point in the [lawsuit], I’m not sure. . . . She’s a very kind of Trumpy lawyer. TRUMP: I think her office is in a strip mall or something.

But just so you’re aware. If I do indeed have to pay $100 million dollars, you’re going to have to pay your fair share. [Laughter.] JONG-FAST: I mean, I’m good for it. And I have books here I can probably sell.

I’m kidding. By the way, I’m certainly not good for it.

I have a lot of questions for you, obviously. First, this lawsuit is a state lawsuit; it’s not a federal lawsuit. And it’s like they did it in Westchester or— TRUMP: Dutchess County. JONG-FAST: Dutchess County, which I think is in central New York. Yes, slightly strange. TRUMP: My uncle Rob lived there. So it is a little strange, because he doesn’t live there anymore. JONG-FAST: Right. OK, so let’s get to the book. The book, called The Reckoning, just came out. First I want to talk to you about the first chapter, which is like incredibly autobiographical in a way that I really appreciate. Can you talk to me about writing? Talk a little bit about that first chapter and how you came to write so personally, because I think we both are able to write about our families, but not write about ourselves. This is a departure for you. TRUMP: Yeah. You know, the first book obviously had a particular agenda attached to it. [Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man was published in 2020.—Ed.]

It really wasn’t a memoir in a way, and it certainly wasn’t my memoir. So a lot of things that I might have been interested in writing about weren’t really relevant to the task at hand.

In large part, the same is true of this book, which is not at all a memoir. It really has nothing to do with my family. However,

as you and I have discussed over the course of the last year, COVID has touched all of us. It has traumatized a lot of people. It has retraumatized a lot of people.

And for probably obvious reasons, I took it really personally, because my uncle is the one who is responsible for this mass suffering and the mass death, which was kind of hard to live with. But I also take it personally, because I have PTSD. I came into COVID already having complex PTSD, which just means it’s trauma that occurred over a long period of time. And that’s what a lot of us have been feeling for the last year and a half.

I felt that it was important for me to be honest about that for a couple of reasons. One, because it gave me an in to the experiences people might be having that other people wouldn’t have. I understand that not just clinically, but personally.

We do mental health and mental illness really badly in this country. We treat mental health like it’s a luxury, and mental illness like it’s still some kind of moral failing. There’s still stigma attached. That gets in the way of our ability to heal.

So I felt if I can be straight with people about my own experiences, and that helps normalize the experience for some people, then I’m happy to do that, because we are all suffering so much. JONG-FAST: You and I have bonded about this before, but I’m sober since I was 19. I love to talk about it, because I feel like talking about being sober is a way to help other people. I didn’t know that people could get sober until I saw [others do it.] . . . It would have helped me a lot to know that there were people who got sober at 19 and stayed sober. So I agree, I think it’s really wonderful when you can share your experience to help other people.

Did the program work? Did you feel like the program worked? TRUMP: You know, I wasn’t there long enough. I went into treatment two different times for various reasons. So the first time around, I was there for three weeks, and it should have been three months, probably, but I had to go back to New York.

Then after about a month or so, I was unraveling again and knew I needed to put the brakes on it. So I went back to Tucson and it was an amazing experience. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Unfortunately, it’s inordinately expensive and it’s out of the reach of most people, which is why our government needs to do better at funding treatments for people’s mental health issues. But I broke my foot like three days before I came home. So my list of things that was going to help keep

“[The documents] were given to me in discovery during yet another lawsuit 20 years ago, because, as I recently said, that’s how my family communicates: We sue each other.”

—MARY TRUMP

me contained and motivated got thrown out the window, because I wasn’t going to be hobbling into Manhattan on crutches to help Syrian refugees or whatever it was I was planning on doing.

So that kind of got in the way of my healing. But on the other hand, if I hadn’t broken my foot, I’m pretty sure I would not have cooperated with The New York Times, and I wouldn’t have written the book and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. JONG-FAST: So what should we talk more about—the book, or should we talk about The New York Times? We’re going to do both. TRUMP: The New York Times. Since we’ve set up the segue let’s go there, because it’s relevant. Yeah. They’re getting sued by Donald, too, for $100 million. JONG-FAST: Is that the only amount he knows? [Laughter.] TRUMP: I think maybe it’s just all he has. I don’t know. JONG-FAST: But there are other amounts of money. TRUMP: So this lawsuit, besides being completely frivolous and you could say probably retaliatory, too, because I’m suing him—and in fact, the lawsuit is in the same county, so for various reasons—and I don’t know if it’s a bad thing, I guess it’s a good thing, but it just underscores how shoddy he is. It’s the worst reasoned, most poorly written thing that you could be subjected to, and it’s so dramatic and silly and unserious that it’s infuriating that people like him are allowed to game the system and use resources that could be used for much more important things, simply as a way to avoid and evade responsibility. You know, this is just a stalling tactic, I’m guessing. JONG-FAST: Some of the reporting I’ve read said that it accused you of stealing documents that had actually been given to you TRUMP: And smuggling them. You know, it’s not Cuban cigars. It’s documents that, yes, were given to me in discovery during yet another lawsuit 20 years ago, because, as I recently said, that’s how my family communicates: We sue each other. JONG-FAST: Lawsuits are the love language in that family. TRUMP: It is. [Laughter.] That’s what happens when money is the only currency. JONG-FAST: A lot of these New York families have older patriarchs who try to screw the younger kids out of stuff. It’s not so unusual. But I think the frequency of the Trump family’s [internal wrangling] is probably . . . also him being president. TRUMP: Yeah, that still gives me the chills. JONG-FAST: I want to circle back for a second on the tax stuff. It strikes me that you really did a huge service, and that also by suing you, he is actually confirming that all the documents that he said were fake are real. TRUMP: Yes. Again, it’s amazing how much of their brief is about the success of my book. It’s just quite incredible. It quotes my book, and it’s just doing me a favor, kind of. My lawyer, the brilliant Robbie Kaplan, summed it up best, basically saying that in essence, this lawsuit is Donald saying, “We need to

shut her up, because she’s revealing the truth about what we did and we need to keep in place the document that prevents her from talking about all the crimes we committed,” you know? JONG-FAST: It really is a confirmation that the guy is pretty crooked. TRUMP: And it’s the same thing with my fraud lawsuit against them, which alleges they stole quite a large sum of money [intended] for me after my dad died when I was 16 and he was 42, even though they were my trustees at the time. They don’t argue that they didn’t commit fraud. They say that there’s a statute of limitations that’s passed. So it’s the same kind of thing. JONG-FAST: I also feel like he’s sort of mad that the RNC [Republican National Committee] didn’t have to buy hundreds of copies of your book, like with Don Jr. [Laughter.] I feel like there’s a residual hostility, like your book actually became a bestseller and no one had to buy all the copies. TRUMP: Listen, I’m happy people bought it, of course. And I hope it served a purpose and people found it useful. In fact, that is one of the gratifying things; a lot of people have said that they recognize their own families in it, and it helped them feel validated or whatever. But the fact that my book sold in a day more copies than his first book sold in 30 years is pretty cool. JONG-FAST: Now, let’s talk about this book. It’s really an interesting book, because you talk about yourself and then you go into the history of America. TRUMP: It takes a turn, because when I started thinking about the next book, it was last October, I think it was much more about the concerns we were going to be facing when we started emerging from COVID, if we ever did.

I really believed that once we started coming out of our apartments and houses, we were all going to be confronted with things that we hadn’t been able to confront, because you can’t deal with your trauma while you’re being traumatized, whether it’s the PTSD or depression, anxiety, substance abuse disorders, serious mental psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, stress disorder, all that stuff.

Then I realized that [you] can’t really write about that in an effective way—one, because it was a big question mark, and two, that’s a policy thing that needs to be dealt with through policy.

So we were then at this incredible point of crisis; we were in the second wave of COVID, we had this serious economic crisis—ongoing —and a deep political crisis. We were a month away from an election that was uncertain. And the fact that there was uncertainty was mind blowing to me, that at that point, 250,000 Americans were dead because of Donald, and yet there was a better than 40 percent chance that he might get four more years in the Oval Office.

It was just extraordinary to me that this country got to this place in what seemed like a very short period of time. How did this happen? I realize that just as with trauma in general and PTSD in particular, in order to get through it—because you can’t cure PTSD, but you can learn how to manage it—in order to get to that point, you need to face not just what happened to you, but the feelings you felt while it was happening. And that’s why the trauma gets suspended in time, because it never gets processed and the feeling gets split off from it, and you can’t get past it. It will continue to affect you on a day-to-day basis unless you go back and you do that hard work. It’s a terrible thing to ask somebody to do, quite honestly.

I realized we need to do that as a country, because, one, we’re in this amazing amount of trauma now, but we always have been and it’s never been addressed. And the white people who committed the atrocities that led to the trauma have never acknowledged their role, let alone atoned for it. I really think that’s partially because of two major things. One is the fact that white supremacy always has been and continues to be operative in America. And two, we never hold powerful white men accountable for anything. And I think that those two things lead us directly to Donald John Trump. JONG-FAST: It is incredible to me that so many people are [assuming] Trump is going

“Eighteen months later, we are all still suffering greatly.”

—MARY TRUMP

to go to jail . . . Meanwhile, I see no imminent jailing. Do you? TRUMP: It’s a terrible indictment of where we are, because it suggests that we haven’t evolved at all.

And if you consider that Robert E. Lee, who was the greatest traitor to this country, owned and tortured other human beings, and he was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people—not only did he not get imprisoned, he went on to lead a very successful life as a university president. And when he died, the university was named after him. Washington and Lee University, I think it’s still called that. And in [1975], President Gerald Ford pardoned him.

So why would we expect a powerful white man who has committed crimes with impunity and committed other transgressions with impunity for his entire life and been allowed to fail upward so spectacularly—why would we expect that there would be justice?

That is a very sad commentary on not just where we are, but where we might be headed. JONG-FAST: We were talking about Robert E. Lee, who is one of Trump’s favorite generals. I recently learned via whatever Trump’s little message app or whatever it is that he publishes those sort of [messages], he talks about [Lee] was actually a very good general; though of course he wasn’t.

A friend of mine called me yesterday and was like, “Trump is going to win. Trump is going to run again and he’s going to win.” What do you think? TRUMP: I think it depends on a few things. I’m much less sanguine about it than I was in November, December of last year, because at the time, there was no way to know how far—although I suppose I should have, I swear I feel like Charlie Brown and the football far too often, because I’m a Democrat—but there was no way to know how far they were going to take it in terms of allowing him to spread the big lie that the election was stolen from him, to the extent that they were going to repeat the big lie and failed to allow President-elect Biden’s team to get access to very vital materials, because remember, thousands of people were still dying every day from COVID. And Donald decided that it wasn’t of interest to him any more, to the extent that it ever was. There was no way to know that there was going to be an insurrection incited by Donald against his own government.

So I felt at the time that he would go the way of Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush and become irrelevant and his crushing defeat—because he didn’t lose as badly as he should have, and it’s demoralizing that 12 million more people voted for him in 2020 than in 2016—however, he did lose by 8 million votes. And probably more humiliating than that is he couldn’t blame the Republicans, because they outperformed expectations and did much better than they should have. So he can’t blame them for his loss, because they did pretty well. So I figured he was never going to get over that narcissistic injury, because, as you know, there’s nothing worse than losing in my family. You may as well just jump off a cliff.

Now, I’m not so sure, because as continues to happen and it never ceases to amaze me, everything seems to be breaking his way. JONG-FAST: It’s crazy. I feel like with Republicans, they kidnap themselves and hold themselves hostage. They had a moment to get rid of Trump. They could have done it and they decided like, “Oh, no, [we] don’t want to alienate the base.”

And now, Trump is trying to find a challenger to go after [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell, which I mean is really fun for me as a Democrat, but they should have known this guy was not there for whatever Republican policies are any more, I guess, tax cuts for rich people and racism. I mean, I guess he is there for the race.

OK. Right. No, never mind. He is there for the Republican values, because those are the new Republican values. But it strikes me that the party sort of let Trump transform them. TRUMP: Honestly, I don’t think he transformed them, I think he just revealed them.

They didn’t just have one opportunity to take an off ramp away from him. They had dozens of such opportunities starting in 2015. I think part of it is that starting with, say, the Tea Party, for example, . . . that motivated the base and the Republicans felt like, “Hey, these reckless, crazy people on the far right are helpful for us. So we’re going to let that monster roam free, but we’ll be able to control it down the road.”

The Tea Party basically took over the Republican Party and . . . . they have devolved to this point, because if they weren’t like this all along, they wouldn’t have allowed Donald to remain in the primary, let alone run in the general. Or they certainly would have gotten rid of him after the first impeachment. They would have convicted him in the Senate.

So time after time, they decided to stick with him. And I don’t think it’s because they’re afraid of the base. I think it’s because he represents exactly what they believe in

to the extent that they believe in anything. JONG-FAST: I think we should let Michelle ask some of the questions from the [audience]. MICHELLE MEOW: Thank you both. Yes, we’ve got a lively discussion and plenty of questions for you, Mary. The first one is, The level of psychological reconstruction we need to do as people is overwhelming. How do we appeal to others when we’re also full of resistance? What is the sweet spot to trigger engagement? TRUMP: It’s going to be different for everybody. Sometimes you have to meet people where they are, and sometimes that means just giving them room to get there on their own. You can’t force people.

I used to work in a clinic that specialized in substance abuse disorders, and a lot of the patients there were mandated by court to go to treatment. Doesn’t work. If you’re resisting, if you’re that resistant, then you cannot force it on somebody.

I’d say the first thing we need to do is we need to focus on ourselves. You can’t give people that much if your own resources are depleted. And I think that’s kind of where we all are right now.

So as hard as it is to believe that we are still here 18 months later, we need to remember that we are all still suffering greatly.

I live in New York; Molly lives in New York, it’s so much better now. A lot of people are vaccinated. You know, we’re still wearing masks indoors and all that stuff. So I feel relatively safe there. But we’re not totally out of the woods. And again, even though luckily so far it hasn’t been anybody close to me, but 2,000 Americans are dying every day still for no reason.

So the very first thing we need to do is assess where we are, get help if we need it. But also remember that we’re all still a little bit isolated and we’re all still in the process of emerging from what has been very traumatic and continues to be. So we need to stay connected. We need community, which is very hard to do when we have been so isolated for so long. And we need to take steps every day to make sure that we are giving ourselves what we need or asking for things that we can’t do for ourselves.

Resistance is a tough thing to deal with. The way I used to think about it is it’s as if we were at war and all of us went to war at the same time. We all served in some capacity. Some of us had desk jobs. Some of us were on the front lines and everything in between, and we all came back at the same time. So we need to understand that we are all going through it.

I do this all the time with people, if I’m annoyed with them or upset with them, I just take a step back and say, Well, you know what? It’s COVID. It’s very likely COVID. And so we need to be forgiving to ourselves, we need to be forgiving to other people and hope that when people are ready to seek help or your counsel, that they will ask and that we will be able to be there for them and for ourselves. MEOW: What are your thoughts regarding being named in a suit by Donald Trump when it comes to the discovery phase where he would be exposed to details of his businesses, business practices all while under oath? TRUMP: He doesn’t seem to have thought that one through, does he? [Laughter.] I’m thinking of sending him flowers. Actually, I might not, because, you know, I’m saving all of my money for when I have to pay him that $100 million.

But I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely there will be a discovery phase here, because he never gets to that point. However, that might be different with my lawsuit against them, because I’m not going to drop it and I will see it through.

So I think that’s what he needs to be more worried about. And I again, I think that’s one of the reasons this lawsuit against me happened, because at least I’d like to think I’ve got him freaked out a little bit. MEOW: Mary, was your complex PTSD related to dealing with your father and his history with a family? Was it cathartic for you? Thank you for admitting it. TRUMP: No, it had nothing to do with my dad or his family, although they didn’t help. [Laughter.] Let’s put it that way. They certainly compounded the trauma. But listen, anybody who’s grown up with an alcoholic parent understands that put a burden on any child who has to deal with that. And especially when that person’s family is so cruel.

So, no, that had nothing to do with it. However, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had some form of PTSD himself, given the unspeakable cruelty he was subjected to practically his entire life. MEOW: If we’re traumatized now, what do you think would happen if Trump gets elected again in 2024? What do you think are the chances of him getting elected in 20204? TRUMP: Hmm. I will answer the question, but I think right now we need to be very concerned about what happens in 2022, because if the Republicans win back the House or gain more seats in the Senate, I think at that point it’s over.

I hate saying that, but I believe it’s true. So we need to focus on that. If we’re lucky and the Democrats increase their margins, preferably in the Senate, then yeah, 2024 becomes the next most important election of our lifetime.

As I was saying to Molly earlier, I believed immediately after the election that he wouldn’t run again because he’d been so humiliated. Then the Republicans proved themselves to be even more craven than I gave them credit for and have enabled him to retain power, to remain influential. And also behind the scenes, God knows what’s happening, but out in the open, they are in every state trying to enact voter suppression laws aimed squarely at preventing Democratic-leaning voters from voting. So if they can rig the system in only three states against us and therefore make it impossible for Democrats to win statewide elections in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, for example, then Donald would run because he wouldn’t be able to lose, and he needs the powers and protections of the Oval Office—he needs them and he knows he needs them.

So we need to hope, for the first time in this country’s history, that a powerful white man who committed egregious crimes against his country and against the people of his country is held accountable. He needs to go to prison, but not sure that’s going to happen. He needs to be impoverished. He needs to be kept from running for office again. You know, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment makes it impossible for insurrectionist to run for public office. That needs to be invoked.

There’s also the question of his health. He’s an old 74 and he’s in terrible shape. And . . . he has serious mental illness, which is untreated. JONG-FAST: What’s your diagnosis of them? TRUMP: I don’t diagnose him because technically I can’t. But we just need to look at his behavior to know that, whether it’s technically this or not, he’s an incredibly antisocial person. Rules don’t apply to him. He lies. He’s a prolific liar. He lies a lot and has no qualms about doing so. And he’s cruel. He has no empathy.

If he feels threatened—and we’re seeing how this is playing out—he will do anything in his power to take all of us down with him. . . . We are still unbelievably at the mercy of a person who literally doesn’t care if we live or die unless we support him.