Mary Trump's book "is the literary equivalent of an ambulance siren"

[highplainsdem]

Review for NBC by journalist Nina Burleigh:


https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/mary-trump-s-book-reveals-trumpworld-s-web-lies-enablers-ncna1233706

The book is the literary equivalent of an ambulance siren. Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, describes her uncle as a man whose personality was damaged early by his sociopathic father, Fred, and his fragile, absent mother, Mary Anne, and whose retinue of enablers have allowed him to fail up while shielding his profound impairments from the public eye.

-snip-

The family's ironclad omerta has often been compared to the Mafia's own code of silence. No one has turned up in cement boots in Long Island Sound, but Stormy Daniels, the porn star who took $130,000 to sign an NDA about her 2006 affair with Trump, says she experienced a chilling visit in a Las Vegas parking lot after she tried to sell her story.

-snip-

The presidency has provided Trump with even more powerful legal tools and resources to keep reporters and investigators at arm's length. His Justice Department tried to use national security as an excuse to stop former national security adviser John Bolton from publishing his insider account of White House chaos and corruption. Whistleblowers like Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman have been hounded or shown the door. Trump has reportedly forced federal employees to sign NDAs. His libel lawyers have aimed a firehose of lawsuits against major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN on behalf of the campaign.

-snip-

Mary Trump isn't the first to report from inside her uncle's strange world. Others — Omarosa Manigault and Bolton, for example — have similarly breached the code of silence that permeates the White House. But her lifetime access gives her account an authenticity that, along with her professional expertise, takes the book to another level of alarming.

-snip-

[dawg day]

1. Slate also asks about the 'enablers'

Mary Trump seems to answer the question of why they do this in a section late in the book about Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump. In describing Fred’s growing realizing that his fair-haired boy, Donald, was a fraud, Mary explains that, yes, Fred himself was a master at fattening his wallet with taxpayer funds, committing tax fraud to benefit his children. (Mary admits she was the one who leaked the family tax information to the New York Times in 2018 for its blockbuster story.)

But as it became clear that Donald had no real business acumen—as his Atlantic City casinos cratered and his father unlawfully poured secret funds into saving them—Mary realized that Fred also depended on the glittery tabloid success at which Donald excelled. Fred continued to prop up his son’s smoke-and-mirrors empire because, as Mary writes, “Fred had become so invested in the fantasy of Donald’s success that he and Donald were inextricably linked. Facing reality would have required acknowledging his own responsibility, which he would never do. He had gone all in, and although any rational person would have folded, Fred was determined to double down.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/mary-trump-book-psychoanalysis-enablers.html

[soothsayer]

2. Same way drumpf pours (our) money into the stock market

[Newest Reality]

3. Fred fell for the sunk cost fallacy. We are paying for that today.

[BigmanPigman]

5. She said they are "embarrassed over choosing to back him"

and therefore must go along with him now. They are too invested, not financially, in having supported his immoral behavior that they can't turn back and "save face" at this point she said.

I don't buy that though. They could stop enabling him and they would gain support like Romney did.

[KS Toronado]

4. I've got my copy ordered.