I received a reviewer’s copy of “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” the book by Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, which reveals the origin story of the very bad orange man.
I don’t know if I will read the entire book, because it is just too harrowing, but in the second chapter, the true root of Trump’s evil is finally revealed.
Trump writes:
When Freddy, at fourteen, dumped a bowl of mashed potatoes on his then-seven-year-old brother’s head, it wounded Donald’s pride so deeply that he’d still be bothered by it when Maryanne brought it up in her toast at the White House birthday dinner in 2017. The incident wasn’t a big deal—or it shouldn’t have been. Donald had been tormenting Robert, again, and nobody could get him to stop. Even at seven, he felt no need to listen to his mother, who, having failed to heal the rift between them after her illness, he treated with contempt. Finally, Robert’s crying and Donald’s needling became too much, and in a moment of improvised expedience that would become family legend, Freddy picked up the first thing at hand that wouldn’t cause any real damage: the bowl of mashed potatoes.
Everybody laughed, and they couldn’t stop laughing. And they were laughing at Donald. It was the first time Donald had been humiliated by someone he even then believed to be beneath him. He hadn’t understood that humiliation was a weapon that could be wielded by only one person in a fight. That Freddy, of all people, could drag him into a world where humiliation could happen to him made it so much worse. From then on, he would never allow himself to feel that feeling again. From then on, he would wield the weapon, never be at the sharp end of it.
That’s when he learned it.
That’s when he finally took the turn toward true evil: when he was 7 years old and his brother put mashed potatoes on his head.
From there, it was straight down to the bottom and straight up to the top of the pops.
This is a truly shocking revelation, and it has shaken me to the very root of my core.