Uncle Donald Trump, the creator of traumas

Violent coronary blockages are commonly called “widow makers.” Some violent human beings should be called “trauma makers.”

These are the solipsists and sadists who speed through life creating psychological chaos wherever they go, ruining other lives.

“I’m here because Donald Trump is my uncle,” writes Mary L. Trump in “Who Could Love You?”” Her new, unsparing memoir about the psychological devastation wrought on her by her family dynamics. At the beginning of the book, she finds herself in a trauma treatment center in Arizona, taking a ketamine infusion to ease her despair. The shadow cast by her uncle has become too bleak to bear.

“The name Trump is toxic,” echoes his brother, Fred C. Trump III, in his own new memoir, “All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way.”.” Without much introspection, Fred recounts his own atrocities of Uncle Trump.

A disturbing number of the stories on “All in the Family” portray the former president as more than just unpleasant: He provokes, tolerates, orders and enjoys the physical pain of others.

“If this were not evil,” Fred writes of one particularly horrific incident, “I could not say what would qualify as such… Where did the cruelty come from? I have struggled with this question for years.”

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These siblings carry a heavy burden. Both are sufferers: Mary, as noted, of trauma and also of dissociation; Fred, of alcoholism. Addressing their losses with candor and a measure of self-awareness, each of them aspires to be, as Fred describes himself, “a different kind of Trump.” But neither of them disowns the name. “Trump” seems to be their golden cross, and they are not about to let it go. Mary’s memoir is more gripping than her brother’s, but both books are, for the most part, very sad.

In tone and emphasis, their stories differ, sometimes radically. (I flipped through the books irritated to discover that the Trump siblings spell their own father's nickname differently; Mary opts for “Freddy” and Fred for “Freddie.”) But when it comes to the tragedy that defined their early lives, they are in sync. In short, their vile grandfather Fred C. Trump Sr., who died in 1999They joined forces with their even more vile Uncle Donald to drive their vulnerable, yet charming, father Freddy (Freddie?) into misery, penury, drink, rehabs, humiliation, more drink, and eventually an early grave.

The story became truly gothic. As his father grew increasingly thin and ill, he was relegated to a camp cot in a stifling attic room and made to work as a janitor. No one visited Freddy in the hospital. He eventually died alone in 1981, aged 42. His ashes were buried in the family plot, although he would have wished them to be scattered at sea.

In the cruelest version, when it came time to divide Fred Sr.'s estate in the 1990s, Donald worked to disinherit his nephew and niece. Mary and Fred sued their uncle and his siblings, and Donald was furious, not only countersuing but also trying to deprive Fred's infant, disabled son William, of much-needed medical care. It was outrageous.

Mary, who has a PhD in psychology, is more frank than ever about the emotional toll her family’s brutality took on her. Fred, who seems more eager to preserve his Trumpian privileges than his sister, leans into a good humor that seems almost sadder than an open mental illness.

Fred's book was written with the help of Ellis Henican, a ghostwriter for conservative authors and a political analyst for Fox News. In the book's most chilling passages, Fred magically shakes off his family's bruises and pledges his love to—of all people!—Uncle Donald. A political needle is being threaded, to unpleasant effect.

Much of the history in both books is rehashed: Donald’s meanness, his racism, his characteristic abuse of others, his draft-dodging. But even erudite Trumpologists may be surprised to learn that Freddy, in a dark moment, brought Mary a piece of horse manure as a birthday present. Donald once ordered young Fred III to hit his uncle Rob. When he did, Rob hit him back. From Mary’s book we also learn that her overwhelmed mother (oppressed, threatened, and banished by turns by the Trump family) regularly ignored Mary’s asthma attacks and refused to take her to the hospital, even though she could be heard choking. This amounted to a form of torture that haunts Mary.

Fred C. Trump III

(Terry Torok)

The most heartbreaking line in the books belongs to Uncle Donald: “Maybe you should just let him die.” Fred recalls then-President Trump saying this about Fred’s son William, who was then in his 20s. Too heartbreaking.

Reading the two books in sequence, I must admit that I briefly thought: Don't let Trump see you two cry! He delights in your suffering… in everyone's suffering!

But of course Mary and Fred know this. They just don’t care what Donald thinks or does. Fred is retired, having made a decent living in commercial real estate services; he is sober, content, and devoted to his wife and three adult children. And Mary Trump? She is a household name in her own right: She comments regularly on politics, is the editor of a popular newsletter, and the author of two bestsellers: “Too Much and Never Enough,” an unauthorized biography of her uncle, and “The reckoning” An analysis of the damage inflicted on the nation.

““Who Could Ever Love You” inexplicably ends with what appears to be a series of brief diary fragments written during hospital treatment. Mary doesn’t exactly sound hopeful, but she finally recognizes that she has the moral high ground and authority (and presumably enough money) to stand up to her uncle in a way her father never could.

In the end, he writes, “Here we are, Donald and I, still on diametrically opposite sides of everything. The difference now is that he is not the only one with power.”

““All in the Family” has a much less encouraging ending.

Throughout, Fred's memoirs have a shaky tone, with the sentence fragments and one-sentence paragraphs characteristic of a prefabricated best-seller. But sometimes they strive, in scattered ways, to address a larger issue. These larger issues sometimes threaten to drag all of humanity down with their own cursed family.

“This nation and this family are inextricably intertwined,” he writes. “What goes to the Trumps goes to America.”

If this is true, heaven help us.

Virginia Heffernan is a regular contributor to Wired and writes a newsletter, Magic and Loss, at virginiaheffernan.substack.com.