The book.

The Guardian

Book by Donald Trump's niece sells nearly 1m copies on its first day

Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough sold 950,000 copies
Legal attempts to prevent book’s publication failed

Thursday 16 July 2020

Mary Trump’s new book Radin/PacifiThe bombshell family tell-all book by Mary Trump, the US president’s niece, sold almost a million copies by the end of its first day on sale and remains firmly at the top of Amazon’s bestseller list.

Trump’s book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, referring to Donald Trump, was published on Tuesday and had sold 950,000 copies by the end of the first day, including pre-sales, ebooks and audio books.

That was after a court order by a family member, Donald Trump’s brother Robert, seeking to block it was lifted, publisher Simon & Schuster said on Thursday.

It was a new record for Simon & Schuster, the New York-based company said.

The book describes Fred Trump, father to Donald Trump and his older brother Fred Jr – Mary’s father – as a high-functioning sociopathic bully who crushed kindness and empathy out of those around him, including the current president.

Donald Trump took over the family property business from his father despite Mary’s father being older. He developed an alcohol problem and died when Mary was a child.

Mary Trump has given numerous interviews this week after being released from a temporary restraining order.

In an interview with the Washington Post, released Thursday, she described the president as “clearly racist”, and linked it to her wider family’s “knee-jerk anti-Semitism, a knee-jerk racism”.

“Growing up, it was sort of normal to hear them use the n-word or use anti-Semitic expressions,” she told the Post.

During an interview with Rachel Maddow on Thursday evening, she claimed to have directly witnessed Donald Trump use racist language. Asked if she’d ever heard Trump use the n-word and antisemitic slurs, Mary Trump replied: “Of course I did. And I don’t think that should surprise anybody, given how virulently racist he is today.”

In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America this week, Mary Trump called for Donald Trump to resign the presidency, saying he was incapable of doing the job.

In second segment of the interview, aired on Thursday morning, Mary Trump said her father and her uncle Donald were not close.

She also said she believed that Maryann Trump Barry, the president’s older sister, did not think Donald would or should be president, before he won the 2016 election in a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton.

“She very emphatically did not believe it would happen or think it should, because he was a man without principle and no one would vote for him. She was horrified by the white evangelical embrace because she knew he had no deep convictions about religion one way or the other and considered going to church a photo op.”

Maryann Trump Barry was a federal judge who retired in 2019, thereby ending an inquiry into allegedly fraudulent tax schemes. Mary Trump recalled that when she, her aunt and other family members were at the White House to visit the president in April 2017, Maryann told an old family story about Fred Jr at 14 dumping a bowl of mashed potato on then seven-year-old brother Donald’s head because he was bullying their youngest brother, Robert.

“We know that he doesn’t like the story, so it was a bit of a dig,” Mary Trump said.

She said that Donald Trump has no sense of humor about the old tale, even now.

Robert Trump attempted to stop his niece’s book in court. In her acknowledgments, the author thanks her aunt “for all of the enlightening information”. A separate temporary restraining order that had prevented Mary Trump from speaking out was lifted on Monday, leaving ABC free to air its interview, conducted by George Stephanopoulos.