REVIEW: Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump

One would be hard-pressed to find a 2020 new-release title which has spawned more headlines than Too Much and Never Enough, the ‘reveal all’ family memoir from the U.S. President’s estranged niece Mary L. Trump, the daughter of his late brother, Freddy. Her openness and brazenly honest prologue in which she explains her reasons for lifting the lid on her family history, grips the reader immediately. Anyone who has ever scratched their head whilst watching a Trump news conference and wondered what could possibly make him ‘tick’ will find the rest of Mary Trump’s exposé equally spellbinding.

Mary L. Trump

In essence, the answer comes down to the way the President’s father, Fred Trump Sr. led his life and raised his five children. Fred’s priority was money – he displayed no love for his offspring, played one against the other and instilled in them no appreciation for sympathy, empathy or charity. Their mother failed equally to teach them the values that most parents wish to engender in their children.

Unlike Donald, whose real estate escapades and failure to re-negotiate bank loans led to his businesses declaring bankruptcy no less than six times, Fred never had any debt. He never gave away a dollar he didn’t need to. All the children (particularly Donald) would do anything to earn his love and respect – something which they sought in vain. Mary’s father was the first casualty of Fred’s despotic fathering. Forced to give up his desired career as a pilot, he was constantly put down and ultimately developed alcoholism and died of a heart-attack at just 42.

Mary writes that her Uncle Donald is now under growing stress from “the effort to keep us distracted from the fact that he knows nothing – about politics, civics, or simple human decency”. She further claims that he “is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others” and that “to do so would be to associate himself with their weakness, a trait his father taught him to despise.”

Decrying his Presidency and what she sees as the death of American democracy, Mary will clearly remain off the family Christmas card list! She believes, however, that divulging the truth about her grandfather and her uncle as well as speaking for her late father is much more important than family loyalty – something which she has never received from anyone but her mother and brother.

Pre-election, the truth as she sees it is revelatory and – she hopes – will help rally American voters to deny him a second term. Whether or not she succeeds in that goal, her book is fascinating and compulsory reading for any political junkies.

—Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump (Simon & Schuster Australia) is out now.

Too Much and Never Enough

How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

by Mary L. Trump

In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security and social fabric.

Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas...

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About the Contributor

Scott Whitmont