Too Much and Never Enough
In February 2019, there would have been about 51 books on the Trump presidency. That's excluding self-published books. On average, 1.5 books a month about him are released*, but none of these books interested me in the least. I thought he was already being talked about enough in the media.
Until the release in July of Too Much and Never Enoughwhich promised to explain how a rather normal human baby could become such a grotesque and dangerous being. Here my interest was piqued, because I am convinced that one is not born so twisted, but that one becomes so. And this is what this book confirmed to me.
Summary
Mary L. Trump is Donald Tump's niece, and daughter of the late Freddy Trump. She takes pains in the prologue to establish her credibility as a doctor of psychology and as an anti-Trump, and puts forward her hypotheses as to the diagnosis her uncle might receive if he ever sat down in front of a professional (one can dream). The list is gruesome:
- narcissism;
- antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is considered sociopathy;
- Dependent Personality Disorder, which involves an inability to take responsibility and the ability to go to great lengths to gain the support of others;
- an undiagnosed learning disability that would have prevented him from processing information properly;
- and finally an unhealthy lifestyle that includes 12 Diet Cokes a day, no exercise, very little sleep and an unbalanced diet.
No way to know if he could thrive, or even survive, in the real world, because he's been institutionalized his whole life, she says. It's rough.
The poor Trump children were raised in a highly toxic family. Between an emotionally absent mother and a downright sociopathic father who worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week building his empire, the chances of developing as a human being were pretty much nil. None of the children received any love; but the unluckiest of all was Freddy, the author's father. Being the oldest son, his father, Fred, expected him to take over the reins of his company when he was older. But Freddy was a constant disappointment to his father, who wanted a "killer" and received infamous treatment for it. Little Donald, who was now craving his father's approval, made the worst decision he could have made for the sake of humanity: to despise Freddy's attitude and do everything to please his father.
But his father, Fred, is not what most moral people would consider a role model. Indifferent to everything that didn't concern him, incapable of compassion for even his closest family, he had more than dubious ways of amassing his wealth. The author recounts that he committed enough tax evasion to benefit four of his children (excluding Freddy) for decades. His philosophy:
“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.”
Donald adopted this way of thinking to the end, in addition to becoming rough, aggressive and disrespectful, traits that Fred encouraged. And it worked. Fred elected Donald as the child who would be able to take over his empire, at the expense of Freddy, who had deteriorated to the point of death while his daughter was still a teenager. Donald was then able to pretend to be a formidable businessman by having his father do all the work, collecting all the credit and burning through an absolutely horrific amount of money. To finally become president of the United States and kill hundreds of thousands of American citizens by his crass incompetence to manage the coronavirus crisis, among other horrors.
An article from the New York Times revealed that during his father's lifetime, Donald had received the equivalent of $413 million, most of it in a questionable manner. To this amount, we must add the $170 million he received from the sale of the empire. What happened to that money? The author has no idea.
Impressions
I thought I knew a lot about this man. But I realize that I didn't know nearly enough. Imagine the most outrageous thing: the reality goes two notches further. I was almost laughing.
Understanding the environment Donald grew up in makes one realize that it is absolutely impossible for him to have any common sense. There is no hope. There is nothing behind the appearances. This is a man who has put on so many layers of masks that it is impossible to go back.
The book is obviously biased, the author does not hide it. I cannot, by myself, verify everything she says: for example, she reports particularly telling scenes from her brother's youth that she never witnessed. But I doubt that she is lying. Everything she says is consistent with what we see in the news every day.
All in all, I was disappointed that the book ended so quickly. I found it informative, entertaining, and highly relevant. I haven't read any other books about Trump, but I bet you won't be disappointed with this one.
* Here is a graph illustrating the number of books about Trump that have been published during his presidency.
Buy the book on leslibraires.ca:
