All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way is a 352-page portrait of Trumpian dysfunction. With an assist from Ellis Henican, Chris Christie’s go-to co-author and a Fox News commentator, Fred Trump III delivers a well-paced and engrossing read.
The author is the son of the late Fred Trump Jr and a nephew of Donald Trump. Trump III thinks his uncle is a jerk, vindictive and terrified of losing, but also someone who struggles with accepting responsibility. The buck always stops elsewhere.
“In my family that sometimes seems like the cast of a 1950s sitcom, my uncle Donald had a role of his own,” Fred III writes. “He was the obnoxious one.”
No surprise there.
“Many of his adult traits – his determination, his short fuse – first displayed themselves in his childhood.”
Over time, they festered.
“I can’t sum up his early days in a single slogan, but I think I can do it two: ‘I wanna do what I wanna do’ and also ‘That’s not fair.’”
Think of Trump’s reaction when he lost to Joe Biden in 2020, or was beaten by Ted Cruz in the 2016 Iowa caucus. You get the picture. If Trump fails to win, the system must be rigged.
Fred Trump III is a successful New York real estate executive, with a career forged outside the Trump Organization. With Lisa, his wife, he campaigns for rights for disabled people. William Trump, their son, suffers from a lifelong neurological disability, which his father describes in poignant detail.
When Donald Trump was a teenager, he was banished to military school. There, he rose through the ranks of cadets. “He was a stickler for everything,” Fred informs us. “When he performed inspections, he showed no mercy.”
On the other hand, “thrust into such a high leadership position, the hard-charging senior … suddenly forgot how to lead”. Past is prelude. Fast-forward to the outbreak of Covid-19, in 2020. As president, Trump repeatedly told governors the burden of caring for the sick fell on their shoulders first.
Martin O’Malley, a Democrat and a former governor of Maryland, called it the “Darwinian approach to federalism”. Trump also argued that more Covid testing “creates more cases”.
At the time, one administration insider confided to the Guardian: “The Trump organism is simply collapsing. He’s killing his own supporters.”
Fred Trump III’s father was the black sheep of the family. He drank too much and died too soon. After his death, paterfamilias Fred C Trump in effect cut Fred Trump III and his sister, Mary Trump, out of his will – at the urging of Donald and his surviving siblings.
William’s condition meant non-stop care and a mound of bills. Trump III now delivers a robust “thank you” to “William’s amazing angels”, his caregivers, along with his medical professionals and others. For a time, Donald Trump was the one family member who helped meet the cost of William’s care. Eventually, he grew reluctant.
“Donald took a second as if he was thinking about the whole situation,” Fred writes. “‘I don’t know,’ he finally said, letting out a sigh. ‘He doesn’t recognise you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.’”
Trump III describes his own reaction: “Wait! What did he just say? That my son doesn’t recognize me? That I should just let him die?
“Did he really just say that? That I should let my son die … so I could move down to Florida?
“Really?”
All this from a president who brags of being “the most pro-life president in American history”.
Then there’s race. Once upon a time, Steve Bannon pondered whether Trump, his former campaign and White House boss, was a racist. “He had not heard Trump use the N-word but could easily imagine him doing so,” Michael Wolff wrote in Siege, his second Trump tell-all.
Now, with fewer than 100 days until election day, Fred Trump III delivers his answer. In a fit of rage, he says, the N-word cascaded from Trump’s mouth.
In the early 1970s, someone left two gashes in the roof of Trump’s white Cadillac convertible.
“Donald was pissed,” Fred remembers. “Boy, was he pissed.”
“‘Niggers,’ I recall him saying disgustedly. ‘Look what the niggers did.’”
When the Guardian broke news of this passage, the Trump campaign issued a blanket denial.
“Completely fabricated, and total fake news of the highest order”, said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson. “Anyone who knows President Trump knows he would never use such language, and false stories like this have been thoroughly debunked.” Tell that to Bannon and Wolff.
For his part, Bannon has compared Trump’s infamous escalator ride to announce his candidacy to Triumph of the Will, the Nazi propaganda film made by Leni Riefenstahl, according to Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted, by Jeremy Peters, a New York Times reporter.
Mary Trump would probably be similarly unimpressed by the Trump campaign’s denial. In 2020, she published Too Much and Never Enough, a bestseller about her family and her uncle. Speaking during her book tour, she said her uncle was “clearly racist”.
Fred Trump III says he never voted for his uncle. Rather, he cast ballots for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. “Did I want the supreme court to reverse abortion rights by overturning Roe v Wade? No.”
Fred also considers Stormy Daniels’ liaison with Donald Trump, the source of his 34 convictions, arising from hush-money payments. Now, with Trump squaring off against Kamala Harris, the primordial forces of race and sex will occupy center stage in the election campaign.
“America isn’t close to finished with the Trumps,” Trump III writes. “And neither, it seems, am I.”
All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
