I like listening to non-fiction audiobooks! Recently, for example, I listened through Mary L. Trump's Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. I enjoyed this one a lot and it gave me many followup thoughts, so I figured I'd document them here in the form of this BOOK REPORT:
Frederick, Fred, Freddy then Mary
This book was written by Mary L. Trump, and I'll need a minute here to explain what that means.
Mary L. Trump (from here on just 'Mary') is Donald Trump's niece. The main character in this story is not Mary, however, nor is it even Donald: It's Donald's father Fred Trump (Mary's paternal granddad, known from here on just as 'Fred' or 'the old man').
Fred inherits the real estate game from his father Frederick (a German guy who amassed profit by purchasing stolen Indigenous land around Seattle and then using it to operate brothels). Making money at real estate is about the only thing Fred cares about, so as a teen he studies things like 'construction techniques' to the detriment of any other pursuit. Adult Fred, however, discovers that his true talents lie within the business of construction. He basically figures out how to siphon public money from desperately-needed depression era housing funds, and in this way accumulates 'fuck you' sums of capital for himself by the time he's in his 30s.
Once he's finished lying/cheating/stealing his way into complete ownership over this or that property, Fred likes to hold the deed forever so he can continue charging rent. He likes charging rent; but he hates renting apartments out to Black folks (because in addition to being greedy, Fred is also virulently racist).
I believe Fred actually gets himself arrested at a Klan march one time, though he knows better than to get caught wearing the white robe! This march had been lampshaded as some 'catholics vs protestants' type affair, giving the cops plenty of good excuses to exonerate those it arrested. The same system will later exonerate Fred Trump for everything: His theft of public funds, his racist landlordery and all the other crimes I haven't had space to mention. All will be forgiven, and his entire stolen fortune shall remain with Fred for as long as he remains Trump family patriarch.
(One takeaway from this book: The entire U.S. justice system's sole actual purpose is to help rich white guys get away with theft!)
Fred produces many children, and his first child is of course ALSO named Frederick; but everybody calls this boy 'Freddy', so we will too. Freddy begins his life as heir apparent to his father's ill-gotten fortune, but he ends his life via alcohol at the age of 42. He leaves behind two children, one of whom is Mary, but he doesn't leave her much wealth (because Freddy's siblings conspire to delete her from the family will and keep more plunder for themselves). I believe it is this act of 'disownment' that inspires Mary to write her book! And she publishes said book smack in middle of 2020 C.E., during one of America's election years, to help throw Donald out of political office.
So that's Mary L. Trump: She's the 'Brutus' to our 'Caesar' here, a spurned inheritor + dutiful American citizen who decides to undertake a great risk by speaking the truth towards power.
Donald The Great
If you imagine Logan Roy from HBO's "Succession", you have a 99.5% clear and accurate picture of Fred Trump. Like Logan, he radiates cruelty and malice; and like Logan, he seizes every opportunity to traumatize and re-traumatize his own kids (he says he's trying to shape them into "killers!"). Fred makes a show of demanding absolute obedience from them; yet he also seems to resent obedience whenever people provide it. Whenever Freddy tries to 'walk the line' by working his own real estate deals, Fred humiliates him for his attempts in front of the whole office; yet after Freddy leaves that business to pursue his own career as a pilot, Fred continues humiliating him through a littany of harassing phone calls + letters (imagine Logan Roy shouting "BUS DRIVER IN THE SKY!" at his son through an oldschool telephone receiver).
I believe the fundamental mistake Fred makes, in raising his children this way, is that he treats them the same way he would some gaggle of dipshit business underlings (y'know: 'degrade and insult them', 'play them off each other', 'hurt them whenever possible to preserve your own advantage' and so forth). He's used to being able to simply use someone up & then fire them afterwards. Never has he challenged himself to actually provide some other person with sustainance, or to help somebody improve, or to really to help anybody else with anything at all. He lacks the patience/empathy/intellect to accomplish these feats, making him into a shockingly-inept father (as well as a shockingly-inept husband, grandfather etc).
One go-to tactic you can use, when you're a business asshole like Fred, is to use your second-in-command like a punching bag. After all, that person is your most dangerous rival: They threaten always to become stronger than you, and if you aren't careful they'll replace you! That's why whenever Fred's second-in-command (Freddy) achieves anything of value, Fred finds it necessary to either a) steal credit or b) publicly tear down that achievement so nobody's allowed to consider it valuable anymore.
An advanced-level variation on that tactic involves actively praising and promoting your second-in-command's least competent peers: ideally people who are incapable of achieving anything, as to maximize the indignity against your second whilst minimizing any potential for new rivals.
This is some complicated tradecraft—some 'Julius Caesar' level shit—so if you're gonna do it, you need to be smart and tread carefully (because you're very liable to lose your good officers over bullshit such as this).
Fred isn't especially smart, and doesn't tread carefully. Like many dipshit Boss Guys before him he's incapable of distinguishing 'friend' vs 'rival', nor 'child' vs' adult'; so Fred decides to employ Roman Senator tactics against his own small children. To make his first son Freddy into "a killer!", his plan is to employ a second son (Donald) as his catspaw.
Whereas Fred never permits Freddy to EVER 'do something right', he designates every one of Donald's actions as 'genius moves' (simply because it was Donald who did them). Freddy and his other siblings get punished for talking back; Donald, meanwhile, gets rewarded for acting more & more like "a killer!".
The story of Freddy's life becomes that his dad shames and belittles him for every percieved mistake/imperfection; the story of Donald's becomes getting congratulated, every time he 'boldly' violates another person's boundaries.
This pattern plays out over years, and then decades. Fred becomes increasingly vexed with his first son, who in turn becomes increasingly traumatized (old Fred just can't understand why the boy keeps trying to escape from him). Meanwhile Donald experiences this abuse in a different way, and seemingly grows dependent on 'the violating of boundaries' as a lifestyle: By 13 he's already being sent off to some boarding school, his parents having lost the ability to control him.
Fred's campaign to undermine and subjugate his main rival (Freddy) backfires horribly, in exactly the way anyone would have predicted: Freddy quits, and now Fred's left with no decent second-in-command. All he has is Donald. Fred's already told a lot of lies regarding Donald (that the kid's good at business, that the kid's smart/competent, that the kid's a decent human being); already he's lost control of Donald, and foolishly granted him too much power. This how Fred winds up falling for the sunk cost fallacy, and plunging forward into the illusion that Donald's 'genius' et cetera are real + have legitimately cemented Donald as heir apparent.
The truth seems to be that every one of Donald's choices is a bad one, and the moment he gains substantial control over Trump family assets is the same moment they start spiralling into debt; yet 'rich people debt' doesn't work like regular people debt. Normally losing all one's savings/property and plummetting below '$0 net worth' is a violent experience. Lawyers, cops and debt collectors come; institutionalized harassment campaigns begin, and basically people try to make you homeless.
For rich people like Donald it's much different: His wealth simply 'inverts', turning from huge amounts of regular wealth into huge amounts of anti-wealth. Various sycophantic bankers, now the co-owners of a massive & marvelous debt, try their best to turn things around without upsetting any of the rich folk. Always they refrain from sending repo guys or cops to Mar-a-Lago; always they get roped into chasing baffling quantities of sunk cost. Fred's bankers prove themselves to be about as incurious and un-clever as all Fred's other underlings, and the results of this ineptitude grow increasingly devastating as the disaster expands in scope.
Mary spends much of the book providing context as to why men like Fred always choose to surround themselves with fools, and I appreciate her analysis very much! Yet even after reading it, the question of 'why donald?' remains perplexing. Why'd Fred and so many others choose to accept this myth about his (sigh) "very stable genius"?
Mary repeats numerous times that Fred MUST have known the truth: He knew he was lying when he put Donald in charge, and gave Donald credit for things he could never really do. Fred spends years after his 'retirement' cleaning Donald's messes in private (right up until the point where dementia starts getting in the way), and this whole time he must've seen the magnitude of his mistake. Many hundreds of people go on to knowingly immerse themselves in the very same lie as Fred (eventually permitting Donald to fail his way up to the U.S. fuckin' presidency). Why?
The task of explaining 'why donald?' is too large for any one writer, historian or critic to accomplish in one book. Yeah it's the parenting pattern I recounted to you earlier; yeah, it's some other things that Mary mentions in the book. But beyond all these practical reasons there's some kernel of pure, elemental tragedy that we can't describe using words. Fred ought to have known better, and it's tragic that he didn't. Hundreds of people who participated in the Trump regime likewise should've known better.
The fact that they didn't is one of those perplexments for the ages! We'll be speculating as to 'the real reason' why it all happened for a good long while.
What I Think About The Book
Fred may never have been much of a Caesar (to say nothing of his asshole son Donald); but with this book, Mary L. Trump definitely achieves a good Brutus! She stood up for her republic and plunged in the knife; yet as the author herself suggests, efforts to stop the Trump family arrived at least four years too late. In its failure to address COVID-19, Donald's national government wrought utter devastation upon New York City (potentially a lot more devastation than Fred Trump's racist profiteering). So far the pandemic's death toll in NYC has been more than 10 times that of the 9/11 attacks (do you remember what this government did to the guy responsible for 9/11?).
We all know this society of ours is going down in flames, but thanks to many millions of people's efforts (including Mary L. Trump's!) we at least managed to depose President Nightmare. Thanks for the book Mary! Here's to going down swinging.