His unique personality flaws
Paul Waldman at the Post has been reading Mary Trump’s book.
Here are some of the highlights:
She claims Trump hired a smarter boy he knew to take the SAT for him; the high score helped get him into college.
She describes Trump’s father, Fred, as not just domineering but a “sociopath.” He was verbally abusive to his children, especially Fred Jr., insisting that they become “killers” unhindered by emotion. “Fred perverted his son’s perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it,” she writes.
Her father, Fred Jr., came in for particular contempt from Fred Sr. for being soft. “The lesson [President Trump] learned, at its simplest, was that it was wrong to be like Freddy: Fred didn’t respect his oldest son, so neither would Donald.”
When Fred Sr. died, Mary was told his estate was worth only around $30 million; the portion of that figure that became her inheritance was the subject of the dispute that led to a financial settlement and her NDA. She later gave Fred Sr.’s business records to the New York Times, which published a blockbuster story showing that the patriarch had transferred over $1 billion to his children (a scheme mostly carried out after Fred Jr.’s death), potentially defrauding the U.S. government of half a billion dollars in tax revenue.
On a trip to Mar-a-Lago when she was 29, Mary came out in a bathing suit and shorts. “Holy s–t, Mary. You’re stacked,” her uncle said to her, with all the grace and sensitivity we’ve come to expect from him.
For a time, Trump hired Mary to ghost-write his book “The Art of the Comeback.” At one point a Trump employee sent her some pages of material Trump wanted to include in the book. “It was an aggrieved compendium of women he had expected to date but who, having refused him, were suddenly the worst, ugliest, and fattest slobs he’d ever met,” including Madonna and Olympic figure skater Katarina Witt.
That’s so classic, isn’t it? He’s such a prisoner of his own ego. Whatever he can’t have he spoils, so he lives in a world of monstrosities.
At a White House dinner in 2017, the president gestured toward his son Eric’s wife; the two at that point had been together for eight years. “I barely even knew who the f— she was, honestly, but then she gave a great speech during the campaign in Georgia supporting me,” Trump said.
Whoops, there’s that ego again. She was just a blur to him until she said something flattering about him – a star is born!
“Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un, and Mitch McConnell, all of whom bear more than a passing psychological resemblance to Fred,” Mary writes, “recognized … that Donald’s checkered personal history and his unique personality flaws make him extremely vulnerable to manipulation by smarter, more powerful men.”
In other words ruthless evil monsters recognize Trump and know how to manipulate him. Awesome.
In Mary Trump’s account, if the future president ever possessed any virtues as a human being, they were eradicated by a cruel father who wanted to make his children just as ruthless as he was. She calls him the “monster” Fred Sr. created, someone who “would ultimately be rendered unlovable by the very nature of Fred’s preference for him.”
Well, if it’s any comfort, I doubt he ever possessed any virtues as a human being. As a rototiller, maybe, but as a human being, no.
“She claims Trump hired a smarter boy he knew to take the SAT for him;”
I wouldn’t put this past him, but literally how? Don’t they check IDs when you show up for the test, and don’t those have a picture of you?
So the rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the infested tree. Fred a sociopath? Who would have guessed.
These days the license gets printed out all together on a little plastic card. In the old days the plastic card had a little square photo laminated onto it. It was a matter of five minutes with an exacto knife to swap out a photo. As a teenager, Trump probably had several fake IDs.
In perpetuity also, look at Donnie Jr., Eric, et al, each with personalities consistent with having a shitty parent. Misanthropy handed down through the generations, but with enough ill gotten gains to get away with it. Maybe I won’t read it after all, the story is probably too disgusting for me. That, and the stupid asshole just isn’t that interesting.
I didn’t have a driver’s license when I took it (or for years after). I don’t know if they did check ID…Then again I don’t remember where the test was given.
Nobody checked my ID when I took the test.
So when Donnie says he’s a ‘genius’, and criticizes other people for their lack of brains, it’s important to remember that he thinks this because he cheated in school, and paid people to cheat for him, that’s his ‘genius’.
I remember every stupid ass that cheated in school thought they were geniuses too, so it’s a common mistake.
I keep thinking he just HAS to be smarter than he looks, but there’s nothing behind the curtain, he really is a world class dipshit. I still like Bloomberg’s assessment of “carnival barking clown.”
I didn’t have any ID to check, so they couldn’t have checked mine either.
I took the SATs in NY state in…uhhh…late 70s, and Trump is older than me.
I don’t remember if they checked IDs, but if they did, all I had at the time was a NY state drivers license. It wasn’t plastic, it wasn’t laminated, and there was no photo. It was a piece of card stock with text printed by a line printer.
After I had been carrying it in my wallet for a few years the edges were fraying, so I laminated it myself, whereupon my friends told me that you weren’t supposed to do that. The story was that authorities wanted to be able to inspect the bare card surface for alterations.
Anyway, there was no security that couldn’t have been easily circumvented.