What the scathing book of his niece, Mary Trump, reveals about Donald Trump

Two weeks ahead of Trump's niece's book 1:29

(CNN) - Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump, bitingly criticizes the president in the unauthorized biography to be published soon, accusing him of being a "sociopath" and claiming that Trump's "arrogance and deliberate ignorance" , which dates from his youth, threatens the country.

Mary Trump's book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (“ Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man ”), accuses Donald Trump's father of creating a Toxic family dynamics that explain how the president acts today. Mary Trump, whose father, Freddy Trump, died after battling alcoholism, writes that he "could no longer remain silent" after the past three years of the Trump Presidency.

“Donald, following the example of my grandfather and with the complicity, silence and inaction of his brothers, destroyed my father. I can't let it destroy my country, ”wrote Mary Trump in the book, of which CNN obtained a copy.

Image of the cover of Mary Trump's book, "Too Much and Never Enough", by Simon & Schuster.

Mary Trump writes that part of the book is based on her own memory, and she partly reconstructs dialogues based on what some family members and others told her, as well as legal documents, bank statements, tax returns, and other documents.

The White House declined to comment on the book.

Mary Trump's book is the second unauthorized biography published in months that features a withering portrait of the President, and, like in the book by former National Security Adviser John Bolton, this text was the subject of an unsuccessful legal campaign to stop publication. Mary Trump's book does not include explosive allegations about Trump's actions in the Oval Office like Bolton's, but adds enriching details to the portrait of how Trump became the real estate mogul and media celebrity who then he ran for the Presidency, largely from the financial backing and support of his father.

• READ: John Bolton revealed Donald Trump's dirty little secret

The book comes at a difficult time for the Trump Presidency, which is struggling to contain the coronavirus pandemic and presides over a country facing systemic racism. He also lags behind his 2020 Democratic rival Joe Biden, according to recent polls.

Mary Trump, a licensed clinical psychologist, offers both her interpretation of Trump's actions in the White House - accusing him of having made "a blatant display of sociopathic disregard for human life" during the coronavirus pandemic - as well as episodes around it. Throughout her business career, Trump's handling of her father's battles against alcoholism and dysfunction and internal struggles within the family. She writes that Trump's father, Fred Trump, "dismantled his eldest son," Freddy Trump, Mary's father and Trump's brother.

"The only reason Donald escaped the same fate is because his personality served his father's purpose. That is what sociopaths do: they co-opt others and use them for their own ends, without mercy and efficiently, without tolerance against dissent or resistance, "writes Mary Trump.

She writes extensively about how she views Trump, whom she compares to a three-year-old, affirming that she "knows he has never been loved" and argues that "Trump's ego is a fragile thing that must be reinforced every moment because he knows in the background that he is nothing of what he claims to be. "

He even claims that Trump paid someone to take the SAT tests to help him get into the University of Pennsylvania. Trump was "concerned that his grade point average, which left him far from best in class, would frustrate his efforts to be accepted," he says.

She writes that he recruited "a smart boy with a reputation for being good on his tests to take his SATs for him," adding that he made up for the effort.

"Donald, who never lacked funds, paid his partner well," writes Mary Trump.

Trump initially attended Fordham University in New York as an undergraduate, before moving to Penn's Wharton School.

"It might be helpful to have a close relative in court"

Donald Trump and his sister Maryann Trump Barry.

Mary Trump says she didn't take her uncle's presidential bid seriously at first, and she didn't think Donald Trump would either.

"'He's a clown,' said my aunt Maryanne during one of our regular lunches at the time. 'This will never happen,' ”wrote Mary Trump.

During the campaign, Mary Trump says her aunt, former Federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, accused Donald Trump of using Freddy Trump's death "for political purposes" by quoting her while addressing the opioid crisis.

Mary Trump also claims that Donald Trump helped his sister obtain a seat in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey through her friend and attorney Roy Cohn.

"Maryanne thought it would be a good option, and Donald thought it might be helpful to have a close relative in court in a state where he planned to do a lot of business," she writes. "Cohn called Attorney General Ed Meese, and Maryanne was nominated in September and confirmed in October."

Mary Trump also notes in the book that her aunt Maryanne insisted that she earned the judiciary on her own merit.

CNN has reached out to representatives of Trump Barry for comment.

Trump Barry would not have ruled on any case directly related to the Trump Organization or his family. After her service in the district court, President Bill Clinton elevated her to a federal appeals court in 1999. In 2018, the judiciary investigated whether she failed to comply with the rules of judicial conduct related to financial transactions in the 1980s and 1990s.

He retired in 2019, and the investigation ended before any conclusion was reached.

"Undermine an adversary"

The book by Mary Trump, the niece of the President of the United States, will be published soon.

Trump's niece describes what she says is the psychological control that Fred Trump, the president's father, had over his children, particularly over Freddy and Donald. She recounts that lying to please and appease her father was "a way of life," and recounts how Donald essentially observed the failures of his older brother, Fred, to adapt and become his father's favorite son.

Freddy had a brief and tumultuous career as a pilot for TWA airline in the early 1960s, just before Mary was born. This happened after Freddy left the Trump company after he was supposed to become the heir to the family business. Mary writes that Fred viewed her father's decision to leave Trump Management to become a pilot as "treason, and she had no intention of letting her older son forget it."

Based on the way Mary Trump tells it, Freddy's strained relationship with his father opened up an opportunity that Donald saw and took advantage of. According to Mary, the underlying message of this early fraternal competition that Fred promoted was to win.

Whether or not Donald understood the underlying message, Fred did: in the family, as in life, there could only be one winner; everyone else had to lose, ”he writes.

The stormy relationship that he describes between Fred and Freddy Trump seems to echo accounts of how Donald, Freddy's younger brother, awaits the eternal loyalty of those around him and seeks control over the lives and decisions of those people.

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Freddy, writes Mary, would tell his friends about the "constant barrage of abuse" he was receiving from his father after landing the job at TWA.

"Donald may not have understood the origin of his father's contempt for Freddy and his decision to become a professional pilot, but he had the bull's infallible instinct to find the most effective way to undermine an adversary," writes Mary Trump.

He also traced some of Donald Trump's current behavior back to his childhood and the way his father treated him.

"Donald began to realize that there was nothing he could do wrong, so he stopped trying to do something 'right.' He became bolder and more aggressive because he was rarely challenged or held accountable by the only person in the world who mattered: his father, ”writes Mary.

Mary Trump described her own father's death from a heart attack at age 42 as an unfortunate episode that illustrated the dysfunctional family dynamics of her grandfather and uncle. Despite having long-standing financial ties to nearby hospitals - including an entire wing named after the Trump family at Jamaica Hospital - no one sought medical help for his father, who had suffered from alcoholism and a faulty heart valve, for weeks. in which he remained ill in his family's home.

“A single phone call would have guaranteed the best treatment for your child at any of the facilities. No call was made, ”he writes.

"Master of the universe"

Mary Trump recounts the President's rise to fame in New York real estate as a result largely of financial support and behind-the-scenes work by Fred Trump, which she said was necessary to make up for Donald's shortcomings.

It also tracks what she sees as an aptitude toward authoritarianism to Donald Trump's early days of working with famed attorney Roy Cohn in the 1980s.

At the same time, she recounts Trump's apparent disinterest in her father's decline into depression and alcoholism, which she characterizes as spurred in part by her grandfather's decision to elevate Donald instead of Freddy as his right hand and successor.

At all times, Mary Trump portrays the support Donald received from his father as the key in his attempts to create a brand of himself as "master of the universe" with a supernatural ability for business.

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"His well-being in portraying that image, coupled with his father's favor and the material security that his father's wealth afforded him, gave him the unearned confidence to achieve what even at first was a sham: selling himself not just as a rich playboy but as a brilliant businessman who made himself, ”he writes. "In those early days, that costly effort was being enthusiastically, albeit clandestinely, funded by my grandfather," he says.

While tracking Donald's rise in his father's company, he also identifies some of the origins of his current behaviors, whether it be dishonesty or lack of empathy. She cites Cohn, who had served on Senator Joseph McCarthy's commission investigating alleged communist activity in the United States, as a formative model.

"Fred had also prepared Donald to be attracted to men like Cohn, as he would later be attracted to authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un or anyone else, really, with the will to flatter and the power to enrich him." , writes.

Mary Trump writes that she believed Trump's father helped create the person the president became, giving him the false impression of success by propping up many failed efforts.

"Donald was to my grandfather what the border wall has been to Donald: a vanity project funded at the expense of more dignified activities," he writes.

Fight for Fred Trump's will

Mary Trump says she was excluded from her grandfather Fred's will as a result of her father's death, sparking a long legal battle of years. She writes that Robert Trump, her uncle and Donald Trump's younger brother, explained to her that she was largely excluded because her father died of alcoholism and was not there to inherit part of the fortune. Grandfather also hated Mary Trump's mother.

Due to these disputes, Mary Trump and her brother ended up suing the Trump family and reaching an agreement that included a non-disclosure pact that came to light during the book's launch.

Mary Trump also accused Donald Trump of trying to "steal vast sums of money from his brothers" by secretly trying to change the will of his sick father to leave his brothers outside the control of the family's fortune.

According to the book, after Maryanne Trump Barry and her husband asked a lawyer to investigate it, the will of the Trump family patriarch was rewritten so that the four brothers, including Donald, had power over the estate and received equal amounts. .

“Maryanne would say years later: 'We would have been left without a penny. Elizabeth would have been begging in a corner. We would have to beg Donald if we wanted a cup of coffee. ' It was 'pure luck' that they had stopped the plan, "writes Mary Trump.

The book also offers other colorful, sometimes lighter, observations of the Trump family dynamic, as a description of the Christmas gifts he received from Donald and Ivana. Mary Trump writes that one year she was gifted a package with three pieces of Bloomingdales underwear. Another year they gave him a basket (which had been given to them) with cookies, sardines and salami, with a print on the cellophane wrapper where there was previously a can of caviar.

Legal battle for the publication of the book

Mary Trump's book will be published two weeks ahead of schedule by Simon & Schuster on July 14, amid high demand after a court battle over its release. The publisher has already printed 75,000 copies of the book, according to court documents.

• READ: A court dismisses Trump's brother's request to block the unauthorized biography written by his niece

After the book was released last month, the president's younger brother, Robert Trump, took legal action to block its publication. Robert Trump briefly won a court order against Mary Trump and Simon & Schuster in the New York State Supreme Court, but an appeals court lifted the temporary restraining order against the publisher the next day.

The restraining order against Mary Trump is still in effect, so she cannot comment publicly.

Its spokesman, Chris Bastardi, said Monday: "The action of a sitting president to silence a private citizen is just the latest in a series of disturbing behavior."

CNN's Kevin Liptak, Michael Warren, Clare Foran, Holmes Lyband, Betsy Klein, Tara Subramaniam, Marshall Cohen, Katelyn Polantz and Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.

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