Too Much and Never Enough

Trump discusses both her immediate and extended family more thoroughly in Chapter 6, detailing her parents’ marital problems and her father’s increasing rivalry with his younger brother Donald. She begins the chapter reliving the traumatic experience of waking up as a child to find her father pointing a gun at her mother. She also describes her aunt Maryanne’s own marital problems, which stemmed from her husband’s drinking and inability to provide a steady income. As Trump points out, the fact that Maryanne and her other aunt, Elizabeth, lived in destitution was mysterious because their father was wealthy. She argues that the three oldest Trump children were trapped in their financial circumstances because they “had been trained not to ask for anything ever” (82).

In 1968, Donald graduated from Penn and went to work for his father at 22 years old. The author argues that from Donald’s first day, he “was given more respect and perks and paid more money than [her] father ever had been” (83). Fred Sr. not only gave Donald “consulting” fees and “hired” him as a banker, but he also appointed him as vice president of several Trump Management companies (83). The author suggests that these moves were done to “put Freddy in his place” and to “consolidate Donald’s de facto position as heir apparent” (83). In closing the chapter, Trump explains that her parents’ marital problems got worse, and by 1970, her mother asked her father to leave their apartment. Despite the countless requests that her family had previously made for apartment repairs that went unanswered, when Trump’s mother called to ask her father-in-law to have the locks changed so that Freddy could not return, he gladly did it.

By 1971, when Donald was only 24 and had been on the job for only three years, Fred Sr. appointed him president of Trump Management. Once again, the author suggests that this appointment was primarily intended to shame Freddy, but also because Fred Sr. recognized that Donald had the unique skills of hyperbole and self-promotion. Fred Sr. had long wanted to expand his business into Manhattan, “the Holy Grail of New York City real estate developers,” but he lacked those qualities (89). Trump argues that Donald dedicated his time crafting a fictitious image of himself in Manhattan circles suggesting that he was not only a “rich playboy,” but also a “brilliant, self-made businessman” (90). Her father, meanwhile, finally decided to quit working for Fred Sr. and attempted to get his own apartment, but his alcohol addiction escalated. Trump contrasts the trajectory of her father’s life, all going downhill from his time as a married pilot for TWA, to that of Donald, who by that point was married to Ivana and had moved from a small apartment in Manhattan to a large apartment and finally to a $10 million penthouse, “while still effectively on [her] grandfather’s payroll” (98).

In the latter half of the chapter, Trump discusses the 1973 housing discrimination lawsuit brought against Fred Sr. and Donald by the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. One of the largest suits of its kind ever brought, it alleged that Donald and Fred Sr. refused to rent to qualified African Americans. Roy Cohn, the notorious attorney who had become famous in the 1950s for his partnership with Joseph McCarthy and his role in outing alleged communists and gay people during McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade, had become friends with Donald and offered to help. The author argues that Fred had primed Donald to be drawn to people like Cohn, “as he later would be drawn to authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un or anyone else, really, with a willingness to flatter and the power to enrich him” (101). Cohn convinced the Trumps to countersue the government for $100 million for misleading statements. While the countersuit was thrown out of court, it was a flashy maneuver and landed Donald on the newspapers’ front pages for the first time (101). Eventually, Trump Management was forced to settle the case, but Cohn and Donald “considered it a win because of all the press coverage” (101).

In Chapter 8, Trump goes into greater detail concerning her life during her teen years as the niece of Donald Trump and the granddaughter of Fred Trump Sr. She explains how she had once believed that Donald had indeed turned her “family name into a brand” single-handedly and that her grandfather was indeed miserly, but neither was true (107). She points out that her family had actually engaged in “vast amounts of alleged fraud and quasi-legal and illegal activities” over several decades (107). In the years between 1975 and 1978, Freddy had relocated to Florida, but he became very ill and was forced to return to New York, where doctors diagnosed him with a serious heart condition that required surgery. The author explains that he then lived at his parents’ house again, and a year after his surgery he had recovered some but would never again be well enough to live on his own (113).

Rather than continuing her education at the same school her father and aunts and uncles attended, Trump decided that she wanted to attend a boarding school. She and her father approached her grandfather to seek permission for the transfer. While Fred Sr. objected at first, he eventually relented, and she soon started school in Connecticut. Her father’s health deteriorated rapidly, and not long after the start of school, she was instructed by a counselor that she needed to call home immediately. When she could not reach her mother, she called her grandfather, who told her that her father had been taken to the hospital, but “it was nothing to worry about” (119). She found out from her mother moments later that her father had died. She also found out that her father had been critically ill for weeks, but no one had called for medical help (121). Additionally, when an ambulance was finally called for him, no one went with Freddy to the hospital, and no one visited despite his dire condition. The author’s older brother, Fritz, gave his father’s eulogy and remarked in it that his dad was “the black sheep of the family” (125).