Who is Mary Trump? President’s niece set to publish ‘damning’ tell-all book

Donald Trump’s niece is to release an unflattering tell-all memoir about the US president next month, her publisher has announced.

Titled Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, the book is packed with what inside sources describe as “harrowing and salacious” stories about the US leader, The Daily Beast reports.

Mary Trump, daughter of the president’s late brother Fred Trump Jr, also reveals in her memoir that she leaked confidential documents used in a newspaper expose of her family’s finances. So just who is the woman behind the claims?

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What does her book reveal?

According to Amazon’s blurb for the forthcoming title, Mary Trump details how her uncle rose to the presidency and “became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security and social fabric”.

“She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr and Donald,” the blurb continues.

The 240-page book is said to present an “authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him”, including “a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse”, as well as first-hand recollections of “countless holiday meals and family interactions”.

The Daily Beast reports that one of the most “explosive revelations” is how Mary “played a critical role” in an investigation by The New York Times into her family’s finances. The newspaper’s expose included allegations that the now president “was involved in ‘fraudulent’ tax schemes and had received more than $400m in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire”.

Although further details of the book are “being closely guarded by its publisher”, Simon & Schuster, the new release is also expected to recount “conversations with Trump’s sister, retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, that contain intimate and damning thoughts about her brother”, the news site adds.

The memoir is due to hit shelves on 28 July - “just weeks before the Republican National Convention, when [Trump] will accept the party’s nomination for his re-election bid in November,” notes the BBC.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Who is Mary Trump?

The eldest grandchild of real-estate tycoon and patriarch Fred Trump Sr, Mary Lea Trump was born in May 1965 and lives on Long Island in New York, public records show.

She received a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Tufts University in Massachusetts and a master’s in the same subject from Columbia University in New York, before doing a PhD in clinical psychology at the city’s Adelphi University, reports The Guardian.

According to a now-deleted LinkedIn profile, she is also a certified professional life coach, the BBC adds.

In 2012, she reportedly started the Trump Coaching Group, a New York-based company with a website that said: “Are you depressed and feeling low? Finding the true meaning of your life? If yes then our life coaches can bring you out from such dwindling situations.”

Further information about her life is scarce, due to her success in maintaining “an exceedingly low profile”, says Vanity Fair. Prior to the announcement of her publishing plans, “she was virtually un-Googleable, and aside from the coverage 20 years ago of a court battle and family feud over Fred Sr’s will, there’s been very little about her in the press”, the magazine adds.

However, her Twitter account offers some clues as to her political persuasions. “In her bio she has written #blacklivesmatter, a gay pride flag and says she uses the pronouns ‘she/her/hers’,” the Daily Mail reports.

The newspaper says that on the night of her uncle’s election in 2016, she launched a “3am tweet storm” in which she described his rise to the Oval Office as “the worst night of my life”. The victory was a “horrific wrong”, Mary wrote, adding: “I grieve for our country.”

“Worst. Year. Ever,” she said in another tweet, before suggesting that her uncle had won because “most Americans are hateful, selfish people who care about nothing outside of their own narrow interests”.

She is now reported to be expecting significant blowback after her book comes out, and “has steeled herself for the likely severance of some remaining family ties”, says Vanity Fair.

“Given her uncle’s scorched-earth approach to negative writings about him... it also seems inevitable that she will incur the wrath of @realDonaldTrump,” the magazine concludes.