Such a sad, greedy, nasty and mean dysfunctional man from such a greedy dysfunctional family. ( )

Disappointing. I didn't learn much more than what I already knew from reading the news and The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump." I recommend that book over this one. ( )

If you want to know why Donald J. Trump is the way he is, his niece Mary, explains it all in TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH.

The daughter of Fred Trump’s oldest son, Freddy, and a clinical psychologist, Mary relates the family history from both personal and professional observations. It is an extraordinary case study of a very wealthy, dysfunctional family: Fred and Mary Trump and their five children: Maryanne, Elizabeth, Freddy, Donald, and Robert.
Friedrich Trump, the grandfather, became wealthy operating restaurants and brothels in British Columbia during the Gold Rush in the late 1800s. He died of the Spanish Flu. His son, Fred, at age 12, took over his role to help his mother and two siblings. He wanted to become an builder, a career choice that his mother supported.
Donald’s mother, Mary, became quite ill after the birth of Robert when Donald was 2 ½ years old. She survived, but wasn’t able to fully function after that. Two youngest boys had to figure out things on their own.
His father was married to his job. He put in long hours six days a week. When he was home, he was very dictatorial. He managed by correction, commenting primarily when someone did something he thought was wrong. Freddy, his oldest son, wanted to be a pilot. Fred considered that being “a bus driver” and Freddy entered the family business. He was given a title and criticism, but neither responsibility nor opportunity to learn.
Fred showed preference to whichever of his sons could be of the most use. Donald learned from watching and realized that he didn’t want to be like Freddy. At one point, his behavior led to him going to a boarding school because his behavior was so poor. Donald then joined the business and learned to act in ways that received his father’s approval. His father realized that Donald lacked many talents to be successful, but he was able to impress important people and that was extremely beneficial to the organization. (He was able to use his influence with Roy Cohn to get his sister Maryanne a federal judgeship.) Fred paid to get Donald out of a lot of problems.“ His cousin Mary noted,“He’ consistently failed up despite his glaring lack of fitness.”
Donald bragged that he was a self-made man despite his father’s huge financial support. When his cousin Mary asked. “What has he ever accomplished on his own?” his sister Maryanne responded, “He has had five bankruptcies.”
TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH was published in 2020. About Donald Trump and the condition of the US under the Trump administration, Mary wrote:

It was a perfect storm of catastrophes that no one is less equipped than my uncle could manage. Doing so would require courage, strength of character, deference to experts, and the confidence to take responsibility and to course correct after admitting mistakes. His ability to control unfavorable situations by lying, spinning, and obfuscating has diminished to the point of impotence in the midst of the tragedies we are currently facing. His egregious and arguably intentional mishandling of the current catastrophe d to a level of pushback and scrutiny that he’s never experienced before, increasing his belligerence and need for petty revenge as he withholds vital funding, personal protective equipment, and ventilators that your tax dollars have paid for from states whose governors don’t kiss his ass sufficiently.

TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH is an amazing analysis of why Donald Trump is the person he is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t explain why he has so many supporters. ( )

This book makes some plausible arguments about the origins of Donald Trump's extremely odd personality. Mary Trump is one of the best-placed people on the planet to make these arguments.

However, there was a large blind spot regarding the behaviour of the rest of the Trump family, which I found distracting. When Fred Trump excludes Mary Trump's branch of the family from his will, she portrays it as a great injustice that the roughly $1 billion (largely ill-gotten) is to be split between four families instead of five. She complains about this for what felt like half an hour of the audiobook. She comes close to a realisation when she mocks other family members for feeling entitled to money they didn't earn, but she doesn't appear to have fully absorbed this idea.

100% inheritance tax, please. ( )

Too Much and Never Enough is a study of the Trump family’s pathology, by insider Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece and a Ph.D. in psychology. It conveys important information about grandiose, vindictive, incompetent Donald (15), who, as president of the United States, “shredded norms, endangered alliances, and trod upon the vulnerable” (186).

Fred Trump, the patriarch of the family, was a “high-functioning sociopath” (24) who was callous, indifferent, controlling, rigid, sexist, and unable to empathize with children. His wife Anne McLeod Trump was an invalid and “the kind of mother who used her children to comfort herself rather than comforting them" (23). Donald, he second-youngest child In this oppressive, uncaring household, developed characteristic defenses: “be tough at all costs, lying is okay, admitting you’re wrong or apologizing is weakness” (43). When "Fred started paying attention to his loud and difficult second son, he came to value those traits” (27).

Mary’s main concern for much of the book is the suffering that Fred caused her father “Freddie." Fred’s pressure and disdain thwarted Freddie’s career as a pilot for TWA and led to his alcoholism and early death. A delayed consequence was that Mary and her brother Fritz were cut out of near-billionaire Fred’s will. They sued, but backed off when Fred’s surviving children threatened to cancel their family-provided health insurance—a dire threat because Fritz had a newborn son who needed round-the-clock care. Eighteen years later and more than a little troubled by Donald’s presidency, Mary violated the family’s silence about its finances, turning over thousands of documents from the lawsuit to New York Times reporter Susanne Craig, leader of the investigative team that produced the Times’ 14,000-word exposé of the Trump family’s “potentially fraudulent and criminal activities" (190), published on October 2, 2018.

A family tree early in the book would be helpful for tracking Trump relationships. The references to lawyers, reporters and other outsiders, as well as family members, would be clearer if Dr. Trump used last names in addition to first names a bit more frequently. ( )