Trump says niece who authored tell-all was 'not exactly a family favorite'

(Image credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

When asked about his niece Mary Trump's new book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, President Trump didn't hold back.

During an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, Trump said Mary was "not a person that I spent very much time with," and he is now "glad" for that, adding that she is "not exactly a family favorite."

In her wildly popular book — released Tuesday, it set a first day sales record for its publisher, Simon & Schuster — Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, writes that the president's father, Fred Trump Sr., was a "sociopath" who had to succeed at all costs, to the detriment of his children and wife. President Trump told Wallace his father was "tough on all of the kids" and "liked to win," but was "a very good man" and "a strong man" and "the most solid person I've ever met."

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Trump said it is "disgraceful" that his niece would write so critically about her grandfather, and he and his family "didn't have a lot of respect or like for her. I would've never said that except she writes a book that's so stupid and so vicious and it's a lie."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.