Too Much and Never Enough

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

 by Mary L. Trump, PhD.         240 pages

Turns out the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  In this book Donald Trump's niece, Mary L. Trump describes what life was like growing up in the Trump family.    Donald Sr. was a harsh task master with his employees and his family.   His word was law and his wife and children abided by whatever he said.   He didn't particularly respect women seeing them as less important than men so his wife and two daughters were marginalized and expected to take care of the womanly duties home, cooking, child-rearing they were never considered mental equals to the men who ran the family.  Mary tells how her grandfather always kept a photo in his wallet of a young woman, maybe 18 yrs old or so holding her exposed breasts which he first showed to her when she was 12 yrs. old and asked her, "What do you think of that?".  Mary had no response.  Many family occasions brought the Trumps together but there was never any real love shown between them.  She talks about Ivana's re-gifting of gifts to her sometimes with something missing out of the food basket (she kept the caviar) and when ivana gave Mary's Mother a really nice purse she left a used tissue inside it.   No one ever seemed to really care what the others were doing and conversations were short and generic.   No one stayed to listen to any one's conversation unless they were making bawdy remarks.   She talks about Donald being the second but favored son and her own father who was the oldest Trump sibling was pretty much cut out of family events giving lesser jobs in DOnald Sr.'s business and over the years squeezed out and left to look and feel foolish.   When he father tried to make his own way, Donald Sr. saw it as a betrayal and cut him and his children and grandchildren out of his will.   While the other siblings recevied 170 million each at Donald Sr's death Mary and her brother who should have received equal shares of their fathers inheritance received nothing.   When they tried to talk to their aunts and uncles about the unfairness they were told, 'Dad never got over his betrayal."  Her father had wanted to become a pilot and did but never was he a part of the inner circle to his dying day.  The  book is filled with recollections and documented statements showing what family background contributed to making Donald Trump the man he is today.  

 - Shirley J.