Niece says 'cruel and traitorous' Trump belongs in prison
President Donald Trumpâs niece says her uncle is âcriminal, cruel and traitorousâ and belongs in prison after he leaves the White House.
Mary Trump, a psychologist, author and outspoken critic of her estranged relative, rejects the notion that putting a former president on trial would deepen the nationâs political divisions.
âItâs quite frankly insulting to be told time after time that the American people can handle it and that we just need to move on,â Mary Trump told The Associated Press in an interview this week.
âIf anybody deserves to be prosecuted and tried, itâs Donald," she added. "(Otherwise) we just leave ourselves open to somebody who, believe it or not, is even worse than he is.â
Asked about her comments, a spokesperson for Donald Trumpâs presidential campaign emailed a one-sentence response: âDid she mention she has a book to sell?â
Mary Trump, the daughter of the presidentâs elder brother, Fred Jr., announced this week she is writing a follow-up to this summerâs scathing bestseller about her uncle, âToo Much and Never Enough, How My Family Created The Worldâs Most Dangerous Man.â
Her new book, âThe Reckoning,â from publisher St. Martinâs Press won't be out until next July. It will trace what she says is Americaâs collective trauma from its founding on the backs of enslaved Africans to the burgeoning economic and mental health impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
America is âlooking down the barrel of an explosion of psychological disorders" from the âtrauma of living in a country in which the pandemic didnât just strike, but it was completely mishandled,â Mary Trump told the AP.
With a doctorate in clinical psychology, she argues that the U.S. needs to reimagine how it deals with mental health and mental illness, treating them with the same vigor as physical maladies.
Mary Trumpâs critical writings come amid legal fights with her family.
Her uncle, Robert Trump, sued to block âToo Much and Never Enoughâ from hitting store shelves, citing a family agreement not to publish stories about core family members without their approval, but a court rejected that.
In September, Mary Trump sued the president, Robert Trump and their sister Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal judge, alleging that they cheated her out of millions of dollars while squeezing her out of the family business. Robert Trump died in August and the lawsuit is pending.
When her book about the family was published in July, Trump tweeted that Mary Trump was âa seldom seen niece who knows little about me, says untruthful things about my wonderful parents (who couldnât stand her!) and me,â and violated a non-disclosure agreement.
The announcement of Mary Trump's second book came as her uncle continued to falsely insist he won reelection but that the vote was rigged in favor of Democratic rival Joe Biden.
The president has spent the better part of the last month complaining about the results, dispatching a band of lawyers led by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to mount futile legal challenges.
Mary Trump said the president's post-election behavior âmakes perfect sense,â given his personality, psychology, and lifelong disdain for losers.
âThis is somebody whoâs never won legitimately in his life,â she said. âBut heâs never lost either. Because in his view, winning is so important and he always deserves to win that itâs OK to lie, cheat and steal.â
Mary Trump said the president inherited his acerbic behavior from his father, Fred Trump, a real estate developer who died in 1999. She called her grandfather âa horrible human being who just reveled in other people's humiliation."
âItâs not simply that Donald is horrible and incompetent and cruel, itâs that heâs been allowed to be,â she said. âEvery transgression thatâs gone on unpunished has been an opportunity for him to push the envelope even further. Thatâs partially why weâre going to see him smashing as much stuff on his way out the door as he can.â
Mary Trump acknowledges that she has seen the president only sporadically over the last 20 years â she wrote in âToo Much and Never Enoughâ that he invited her to a family dinner at the White House in 2017 â but, she argues, âhe hasnât changed at all."
"Iâm essentially looking at the same person I knew when I was growing up," she said.
Donald Trump is facing at least one pending criminal investigation, a probe into his business dealings by the Manhattan district attorney that has been slowed by a legal fight over access to his tax returns.
No ex-president has ever been arrested after leaving office, but Mary Trump argues that shielding powerful people from punishment has historically harmed the country. She used Confederate General Robert E. Lee's post-war absolution as an example.
âI think it would be a tragedy if Donald and everybody whoâs enabled him and committed crimes with him is not held accountable,â Mary Trump said. âIt would make it impossible for this country to recover in the long term.â
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